Anthony Smith - GLOG 2007/2008: London 2012 Logo

And so this is what £400,000 got us to. It has been a cause of debate the past week and the vast majority are against it.
The design is supposed to attract the younger audience but many feel the bright colours and jagged edges patronise the intended audience and seem to take away from the nature of the competition. After all the Olympics is a prestigious event, an historic event, an event which is well established in its roots. Does this represent this? Oh and now there's fears over epilepsy...how was that overlooked in the design process?!

To be fair to the logo it does work well as an animation, except for the epilepsy of course, but as a static identity it has many flaws, one being the fact that it need explaining that it supposedly says 2012!

There have been protests and online petitions to scrap the logo but personally i think this is now a time to back the logo, no matter how much we hate it. Do we really want to be the country who wins the Olympic bid, create a logo then scrap it?! We'd surely be a laughing stock, even more so than we are now! Maybe the Olympics in London will be remembered as the best Olympics, but the one with the shit logo? Maybe that's the best we can hope for.

On 7th June MPs called for a rethink on the logo but where do we go from there? If they do decide to scrap the logo who designs the new one? How long have they got to do it? The BBC ran a feature on logos designed by members of the public, shown below. Some of these are actually rather good and many would feel these would show London, and Britain of course, in a better light BUT if there is a re-design and one of these was used, even as a basis, would the world not just think then..."That was designed by Joe Bloggs"?

It's a difficult one to call and many will be debating this for weeks and months to come. Is it best for us to scrap it though? I personally think not...Back the Bid, Back the Logo!