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Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Uh-Oh Logo
The UK media this morning is full of mocking outrage about the new logo for the 2012 London Olympic Games. £45 million £400 000, it cost. And what does £45 million £400 000 buy you? This:
This logo was unveiled yesterday. By today ‘an online petition calling for it to be scrapped has more than 25,000 signatures and over 3,200 messages have been posted on the BBC Sport website’, says the, er, BBC Sport website. ‘It looks,’ says one of these latter message posters (called ‘NewLogoHater’, which is either a fantastically serendipitous surname or else an alias), ‘as if the 80s has thrown up into 2012.’ My first thought on seeing it on yesterday’s news was that it looked like a crunkily jigsawed pink swastica (I see today that b3ta anticipated me on that one). Then somebody on Radio 4 said that it reminded them of ‘Lisa Simpson fellating a stranger’, and once that interpretation was mooted it drove out all possible other interpretations from my brain. Now when I look at it that’s all I can see. This is a logo that is saying ‘come to the London Olympics in 2012! It’ll be a wonderful experience, not unlike Lisa Simpson fellating a stranger!’ I don’t believe that’s the message the British Olympic committee wanted to put out.
The moral of the story, I suppose, is that if you are designing a logo, make it as unlike a Rorschach inkblot test as possible. Swoosh, good. Golden arches, fine. Cartoon character performing intimate act, less so.
Comments
How odd that you and I would cross-post about weird synaesthetic responses to things. (My God, it does look like Lisa Simpson.)
You wouldn’t describe this post as ‘potentially philosophically substantive’, though, would you.
Rorschach tests can be very philosophical, surely. See here.
45 million pounds? That’s insane, may I say. How could it have possibly cost that much? Couldn’t they have just run a contest (prize 50,000 pounds) and voted on the winner?
Man, I’m totally not seeing it.
These corporate logos don’t come cheap, you know.
To be fair, I assume that the £45 million was for the whole package: logo, website, launch ceremony before the world’s press, jazzy little film bigging-up London etc. Unfortunately this latter was so jazzy it caused photosensitive epilectics to have seizures and has had to be dropped sharpish. All in all not a good day for the British Olympic Committee.
According to an article in the Telegraph, the new logo costs £400,000, not 45 million, and was paid for with private money. Not that that makes it less atrocious.
45 million, 400 thousand. Pooh-pooh, no difference at all.
And now The Valve and YesButNoButYes converge on a Simpsons sex simile....
I think it has more of a universal appeal to it. I don’t see 80’s in it. But. . .it will probably be changed because of all the complaining (and cost another small fortune to do it). Its just probably a little more artsy than what the average person is used to.
Took me a bit to see it, but now that I do, you’re right, it’s all I can see… Interesting mental image, but not one I need to be reminded of every time I turn on the Olympics.
I can try and help (if it’s help seeing Lisa Simpson give a bj that you want):
Ok, Lisa and the dude are in profile, and her head has the olympic logo, and his forearm says london. Why is london all lowercase? That adds insult to injury.
It looks like a fractured swastika. Is this meant to portend a redux of the Berlin Games? Will Israel be invited?
Surely this can’t be as bad as what Making Light linked to as one of the most unfortunate logos of all time—which, I have to admit, would be a great logo for a mad scientist who likes to graft extra appendages onto people.
it is the ugliestm weirdest logo I’ve ever seen. And the 2012 doesn’t come across at all. Or am I supposed to do some Tangram with it first? Please, please change it!
The Sydney 2000 logo looked like an angry chicken…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Sydney_2000_Logo.svg
This logo makes you wish the French had won the bid. I’m sure they would have come up with a logo expressing some class and grandeur instead of this icomplete jigzaw puzzle for three-year olds.
Anyone awake? I’m taking my orals in 14 hours. Should I go to sleep or study all night?
And does anyone know anything about Rabelais? I’m thinking everyone has that one book on their orals list they just say fuck it and dont read. For me that’s Pantagruel. Of course I’ll probably get ten questions about it. FUCK YOU RABELAIS
ok, back to comparing the Filostrato and the Troilus...tick tock, tick tock