David McCreath says:

Man, there's just no getting away from its ugliness. Sure, ugliness is subjective and there are probably some people who don't think it's ugly. And ugliness is not necessarily a bad thing in design; ugly design has frequently been used to great effect -- the creative shake-up punk rock caused in pop music rippled across visual design, art, fashion, and writing. It caused all kinds of people to completely reassess creative processes and their output. A reboot, if you will. A lot of further useless ugliness came out of it, across the spectrum, but a lot of good came out of it, too.

And I think it took a lot of confidence on the part of the design team *and* the London Olympic committee to make *this* mark the logo, and further, to use the pink and yellow combination for the launch. I would love to see this reboot the Olympic logo design process. They have gotten predictable. However, I think it's also possible to do something shocking and rebooting that isn't just flat out unpleasant to look at; that doesn't look like a half-baked idea for a graffiti tag where the shapes have no apparent relationship to each other aside from their angularity.

This logo, for all it's ballsiness and chutzpah fails spectactularly in one significant way:

It doesn't say anything about the Olympics.

Some people may scoff at the "Olympic ideals", and in this age of sports marketing and doping and all the rest of the things that threaten the Olymics, they may seem antiquated, but they mean something to a lot of people. In a time of world tensions that in some ways is just as scary and nerve-wracking as the Cold War, the idea of bringing together people from all over the world to compete in some friendly games is important.

Previous logos have typically aimed for some combination of stateliness and reserve with a dash of local flair. Occasionally someone would throw in some cuteness for the group hug aspect of the Olympics. They were getting a little predictable yes, but they were also making use of tradition.

Now I don't think the Olympics needs to be treated with kid gloves, and I don't think that stateliness and reserve are the only valid ways to portray those important OIympic ideals.

But this logo? This logo is about the logo, it's not about the Olympics, and that's where design goes off the rails.

June 7, 2007 11:00 AM

Andre Torrez says:

Thanks, Mike for putting to words exactly how I feel about that logo.

June 7, 2007 5:17 PM

Erika Hall says:

I can appreciate the attempt to be forward-looking, and risk-taking, and to create a mark that will work well in all media. However, where this logo fails for me is the utter lack of humanit

The Olympic Games are at their core a celebration of particular aspects of human potential, and of the individuals who work incredibly hard for the chance to be the best in the world (and not the world as in World Series either).

This logo may be media-friendly, but comes across as flashy, crass, and sensationalistic, positioning the olympics as just another media phenomenon unmoored from any physical reality or inherent meaning. I like my MTV, but this isn't that.

It would be nice to see a symbol that attempted to capture the relationship between authentic physical competition and some quality both noble and human.

Also, the typography sucks.

June 7, 2007 6:33 PM

Jesse Gardner says:

We're supposed to drop our gloves at the mention of the word "art" because beauty is all in the eye of the beholder?

I disagree. I think there is good design and bad design, and these logos are a good example of bad design. Trust me, I understand the importance of being different; it's what drove Jonathan Ive to design a sleek little music player. But there's a big difference between being progressive and being unusual. I welcome design that challenges the rules to accomplish something greater, to communicate on a different; but garish design that communicates nothing in particular is a laughingstock.

/rant

June 8, 2007 5:50 AM