Prescott's Design Blog

Just when I start talking again about how much I love the British design aesthetic, we get the unveilling of the new London 2012 Olympics logo. I reckon it’s all gone a bit a pear-shaped…

The New Logo (left) and the Previous Logo, when London was still a candidate City

The London 2012 Olympics have been a source of turblence since it was announced that London would host the games. In traditional British fashion, the rumblings began almost immediately over budgeting and logistics, and they continue over the new logo. The BBC, typically understating things, says:

The new design, which cost £400,000, has received a mixed response, but Lord Coe was adamant it put across the image and message that he wanted the London Games to deliver to the world.
“It’s not a logo, it’s a brand that will take us forward for the next five years,” he told BBC Five Live.

Sebastian Coe, while he may be a Gold Medalist himself, is not a brand expert, and I fear that built upon such an eccentric creative tone, the Olympics won’t be the great unifier and source of inspiration that London needs. The British people are already speaking out against the logo, which they feel is outright terrible. A Poll on the BBC site shows evidence of that:

The design community has been exploding with firey commentary such as the comments on the news site DesignWeek.co.uk, which are not quite so diplomatic as those of the BBC:

I can see what they tried to do here… Sadly it fails on just about every level. A missed opportunity for a lively, contemporary logo to represent London and the country. Let’s hope they have the courage to commission a redesign, at no further cost, as it seems clear that this does not successfully fulfil the brief. And to do it soon so this embarassment can be forgotten long before the games themselves.

Ouch.

I could give my opinions about the chosen logo, but instead I’ll pose a question: What is wrong with the old logo? The London 2012 Candidate City logo is simple, yet bold. The coloured “ribbon” is actually in the shape of the Thames River, which makes a lot of sense, considering the site of the games. Even if you didn’t know that, you could see the Ribbon as a useful piece of graphic, and one that could be expanded across a boatload of other design media.

The BBC Sport page features a few user-submitted (read, amateur) logos as possible alternatives to the pink jaggy whatsit. Some of them are not bad.

Seth Godin and others have already picked up the story and have begun to comment on the logo. It will be interesting to see how this pans out and if London2012 and Wolff Olins are going to make any revisions amid a torrent of backlash from the design community, and perhaps the public as well.

UPDATE: From Speak Up comes an image of the logos of recent olympiads. When examining the logos of late, its evident that the logo carriers are tremendous amount of cultural weight. I have full empathy for anyone trying to tackle thousands of years of history and culture by cramming into a multi-coloured bit of logoness. So the questions now becomes: does the 2012 logo represent the Britain of the near-future? Mmmm, prolly not. I remember seeing a fair amount of pink, yellow and blue when I lived in the UK, but nothing that reminded me of the 2012 logo. Except perhaps the Big Brother logos and stylings.