2012: Part II

I have a confession to make: I was a little hasty in my last post. Yes, my initial reaction was not terribly positive, and yes, I couldn’t quite understand how it could have cost £400,000.

But I have spent the past few days reflecting on the logo (I’ve not had much else to do…), and I’ve read a fair amount about it, from the London freesheets spotting a bandwagon to jump on, to some terribly well-informed analysis from some of the world’s foremost designers.

And I’ve changed my mind. I can honestly say that I like the logo. Well, maybe not like. But I can absolutely understand the reasoning behind the design, and I have absolutely no doubt that come 2012, it will be appreciated by all.

It’s important to realise that this “logo” is not designed to represent the 2012 games on its own. It is just one small part of a package that is yet to be unveiled. The mascot, the general visual identity, the sponsors… we don’t know any of them. We have no idea how the logo will be used on McDonald’s tray liners or Lloyds TSB statements. More importantly, we have no idea what will still be considered “cool” and “modern” in 2012. Five years is a long time in design terms. Drop shadows, reflections, gradients – they might be the “in thing” now, but come 2012 they’ll look horribly dated. And of course, we don’t know how we’ll be looking at the logo in five years – will we still be using flat web pages, flat TV screens, static newspapers? Probably, but you never know.

This logo will work with anything. It will look the same printed on a cheap Maccy D’s tray liner as in a multi-million pound, huge screen, digital cinema advert. It will look fine on t-shirts. It will adapt to its surroundings, and can be adapted to do whatever it is needed to do.

I was reading London Lite or thelondonpaper or one of the like on Wednesday. The freesheets had all decided to do a readers’ competition to design their own logo, and whichever paper I was reading had found a graphic designer to judge the entries. His criticisms all featured the same few phrases: “bland”, “overcomplicated”, “not unique”… none of these could possibly be levelled at the Olympic logo.

I’ve run out of steam. I can’t remember what I was writing when I started writing this entry (45 hours have passed between start and finish…) – so I’ll stop here.

Coudal has an excellent breakdown of why we should all support the logo. Read it, understand it. And get behind it.