london olympic logo

Oh what the hell, everyone else has chucked in their ten pence worth so why shouldn't I?

Right let's try and look at this from a designer's point of view. I would love to say it makes a bold forward looking statement for London and its hosting of the Olympic games. I would love to disagree with the general public and state that it's a fantastic piece of design that in years to come will be held up as a real modern design classic, but I can't. To be frank it stinks. But I think more importantly it points out how big agencies with 'credibility' can produce inadequate design and 'up sell' it.

When I first saw this logo I was in a presentation and my gut reaction was 'hey let's give it time.' But then I went back and took another look at it and if I'm being really honest, if any of my designers came to me with this I would be very disappointed. I understand that it's supposed to represent '2012' in it's form but it looks so angular it produces a feeling of uneasiness. I read that the inspiration was from graffiti - oh God old designers trying to be trendy, it's worse than your dad dancing to the Arctic Monkeys at your cousin's wedding. But to me the biggest gaff is the typography. Bottom line is that the type is too small within the logo. This device will have to be produced on every kind of merchandising that the marketeers can think of, from caps to crap pens and it just wont work. It fails on so many levels of communication. Just yet another case of the emperor's new clothes and I'm so sad to say that designers seem to do that so well.