I'm all for designers trying to break out of their shell but this Dwayne-Wayne ink blot created for the 2012 Olympics is a cruel fraternity prank. After looking at this work for the first time I wondered how many paint chips does a person have to eat to think this is brilliant work? Fifteen (with lead of course) or five-thousand (latex non-glossy)?
I mean seriously, what, huh? uh, are you sure this is it...really? So the real one, oh, this is the real one? Pink and yellow? Will there be a version for board shorts? Yes, I'm sure it does look good on a pair of Vans. Does this have anything to do with the 25th anniversary of Fast Times at Ridgemont High? No? Just a coincidence, eh? When did they legalize marijuana in London? Is that French ice skating judge somehow involved in all of this?
Thankfully there is more to London than day-glo rorschach tests and it might, just might be possible that after more work is unveiled this will all start to come together but somehow I doubt it. When it comes to Olympic logos and design systems, make mine Otl Aicher.
At least his work didn't induce epileptic shock.
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I think it's unfair to group Pikachu in with the Pontiac Vibe (I think that's what it was...) and this new thing they're trying to call an Olympic logo.
Dude the Pontiac Aztec looks like Pikachu with a steering wheel and four tires.
It's about time the Special Olympics X-Games got a logo.
I'm living in London right now and word on the street is that the logo is universally loathed. Everyone I spoke with today finds it equally horrifying/hilarious: "Is that a joke?" "It looks like the Myspace page for a horrible Nu Rave/electroclash band." Etc.
It's easy to be a hater. I want to not jump on the bandwagon here, but I'm having trouble warming up to it. Sigh.
Pikachu rocked / is still rocking. What is wrong with him?
Also, everyone hates the logo now, but as soon as they smooth out those edges and throw up a violator and a 2.0 beta tag on there, everyone will love it.
I've been hearing a handful of arguments for why it's actually a 'good' logo but I have yet to hear an argument for it that explained why this is the case when it has nothing to do with London, or the Olympics beyond the fact that it says 'London' and has the classic Olympic rings stamped onto it. I guess there's also the heavily distressed year too. Maybe it could be considered better if applied to an appropriate situation.
Brand identity doesn't necessarily have to visually tell you what the brand is (you can't tell that Target is a retail store by the logo alone) but the Olympics is a brand of sorts that is highly dependent on geographic location and the events that take place within. If you remove the word 'London' you wouldn't know jack about the location. You'd see it was for the Olympics and might notice that it also says 2012 but are left with nothing to indicate location. Remove the Olympic rings and you have no idea this is for a sporting event of any kind. This logo will become a known brand through it being criticized, much like television commercials that force you to remember their brand by being painfully annoying. Olympics, apply directly to your London?
Most of the user-submitted logos blow this pink atrocity out of the water.
pie in graphic design's collective eyeball. it's like the post-post modernist's lament -- it's all a big freaking joke.
What's wrong with the 5 rings as a logo?
Maybe I'd like the logo more if it easily mapped on to a map of london. Either way, though, I'd love to be paid £400,000 for that kind of work.
I love the logo, but it was huffing spray paint, not eating paint chips, that made me see the light. Get it right.
> What's wrong with the 5 rings as a logo?
Wait, what? Rings?
> I love the logo, but it was huffing spray paint, not eating paint chips, that made me see the light. Get it right.
Ok which color did you use because I just huffed an entire can of Royal Blue and I still can't see it. Is this a stereogram thing?
Grouping Pikachu, the Aztek (Ass-tek is better I think), and the 2012 logo was a stroke of brilliance. They all exude the same kind of repulsiveness.
It's also difficult for me to look at the logo now without seeing Lisa Simpson giving head. There's a mental image I bet you could have lived without.
Bryan Bedell posted some good points on Coudal about why he likes the logo and thinks it is effective -- distinctiveness, reproducibility, simplicity, etc. All of them valid.
But none of it gets around the simple, unavoidable truth that the thing is freakin' ugly as hell. There are many logo designers who manage to achieve all of the points illustrated in the article while creating something beautiful. Paul Rand comes to mind.
Article: http://coudal.com/olympics.php
Your prayers have been answered.
Just read on CNN that they panned the logo.
I first saw this logo earlier this week via Brand New a product of the great folks at underconsideration.com The first thing I thought was...
"I want my, I want my MTV!"
Then I figured they were trying to welcome back the 80's. Terrible, terrible logo!
I can totally explain this... Time traveling lobotomized monkeys from 1992 were sent to gift us with this blessed mark!
Sarcasm aside, isn't it a high crime in Britain to make a logo without using Futura?
OK ALL sarcasm aside, a woman at work and I were talking about the logo and how bad it looked. I was pointing out how the first "2" looks like an "Z" and the "12" looked like an "R" when she exclaimed she had no idea the designers were even trying to depict "2012" she just thought it was abstract... I call that a failure, and she's a fairly smart lady, so I'm blaming the creators... They missed the mark, literally and figuratively.
I think the Olympics say international, class, sport, inclusion, goodwill.
The 2012 logo says haphazard, jarring, in-your-face, different-to-be-different, chaotic...
I think there are things you could create an abstract, jarring logo for to be experimental and to try to push an envelope. I just think the Olympic Games aren't that venue. It's taking a logo that describes more of what the X games or what some designers thought would be a way to push an envelope and not really speak for the Olympics or London. I think the logo fails because it's a misinterpretation of what the Olympics are.
The Olympic rings have been an icon for the olympics not in a vacuum of cool design, but because they speak for the Olympics with the different colors, the unity, the classiness, the style of simplicity. The London logo vomits all the styles that are the opposite of that.
As for character design, Pikachu is classic. He's easily one of the most iconic anthropomorphic characters, right up there behind Mickey or Bugs
folks are talking about it. the more they talk, the more it becomes a "Brand" ... By next year it will be a LOGO - butt ugly but a Logo. And yes me too about getting all that quid for ... all that hard work ;-)
I hated it, then I liked it, now I don't again. I think... I think that Coca-Cola has the worst possible brand logo in the world. If someone came out with it now, they'd be laughed at. But because we're all used to it, we just see the brand. So, give it a year or two, and it'll be exactly as awful, but we won't see it. And then it'll be quite handy it's so malleable.
It's not a terrible logo. It's maybe not a great logo, but the hatred towards this seems to be much more related to mob mentality group think than well reasoned design critique.
OOOOOH! It is "2012". LOL - I totally didn't see that until now. Was just broken glass/dreams to me (because there is only one Gold Medal per event, maybe?).
I, too, was a bit taken aback that Coudal found this logo successful. Unlike Carrie Fisher, however, I won't change my opinion regarding an awful product just because it won the vote from the popular kids.