2012 Olympic Logo: Fiasco or Success?
What a logo weekend! There's been quite a bit of conversation about the Peopleized logo on yesterday's post and unless you have been sleeping under a rock for the past few days then you are aware of the overwhelmingly negative response about the London 2012 Olympic logo. It’s hard to realize at first, but the logo is in a psychedelic form of 2-0-1-2 with the host city’s name and the Olympic logo. But was it worth the $800,000 they paid for it?Here it is! This is what almost everyone has been talking about lately:
The Olympics 2012 logo breaks every design rule in the book. It is not simple, it is not memorable, it is not beautiful. Not surprisingly, a lot of bloggers are taking about it and most most of them hate it. Some furious protesters have already launched an online petition against it with some 50,000 signatures already.
BBC reports a segment of animated footage promoting the 2012 Olympics has been removed from the organisers' website after fears it could trigger epileptic seizures. Ignore the Lisa Simpson bit in the end and don't watch it if you are susceptible to an epileptic seizure:
When I first saw the logo, I didn’t think much of it. However, after looking at the logos done by BBC News readers, in particular the thumbnail that represents today's post, I thought I should put my humble opinion out there. First, let's have a look at what the users submitted as alternative logos.
Some cheeky ones:
Some nice ones:
VERDICT: Ugly, complicated, and expensive. It will be a great success!
To be frank, I prefer the logo that costs $800,000 (does it really cost that much or is it just hyped?) to silhouettes of the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, or five London Eyes interlocked. It might not be nice to look at but that is not my point here. Neither is "it doesn't mean anything" or "there is no message behind it" argument. Maybe "meaning nothing" was the intention.
The point is, the logo itself made a worldwide impact. Call it ugly, outrageous, or madness, and you will find yourself among those who noticed an olympic logo - something no one cared about until now. Just the number of people overreacting to the logo alone, before seeing how it will fit into the London 2012 brand campaign in general, shows that this will be an olympic logo all of us will remember. One that lives beyond and outside of the 2012 Olympic Games themselves.
Honestly, do you remember any of the past Olympic logos at all?
Will you remember them, say, 20 years later?
Like Seth says, "a great logo doesn't mean anything until the brand makes it worth something" and he is absolutely correct. I think the London 2012 Olympic logo is executed well. Maybe it will grow on you too. After all, it does look like fungus.
