London 2012 unveils a horrid Olympics logo

Olympics Logo I must agree with Amit that this logo has to be one of the worst logos of all time. The official drumroll during the unveiling of the logo said, “Available in four colours — pink, blue, green and orange – the new emblem is modern and will be dynamic, evolving in the years between now and 2012.” WTF! If you aren’t already horrified by the choice of shocking pink for the greatest show on Earth then the organizers outdo themselves by offering other horrid hues of orange, blue, and green. The logo with its yellow highlighting looks like a flashy Internet ad. The designer, Wolff Ollins was paid an astounding £400,000 for this monstrosity. His website is equally bad. Theo Sparks gives the logo the treatment it deserves. Even the designer is mum on what exactly the logo represents.

I am not against abstract art (remember, I’m an architect) but I am dead against any trash that is passed under its name. Heck, the initial logo during the nomination process was waaay better. Take a look at the Barcelona Olympics 1992 logo and you’ll know what I mean. Even the forthcoming Olympics have decent logos (note the choice of colors).

If the logo design job had been opened out to the public in a web 2.0 way, it would have definitely yielded some excellent designs.

Although a tad cliched, this public-submitted logo by James Wren to the BBC is vastly better.

Olympics logo by James Wren



  • http://pikeyspeak.com The Piker

    Wolff Ollins’s website has the creepiest site design I have ever seen.
    The eye in the homepage is so weird. Plus his general design tries to be good and fails miserably.

    (As you may have noticed I haven’t even commented on the logo. Any kind of word that I thought of using seemed an understatement.)

  • http://www.ipatrix.com Patrix

    Piker, I too was weirded out by his ‘eye’ website too and don’t get me started on the navigation. But at least I won’t be seeing that splashed across my TV in 2012.

  • http://www.suyogdeshpande.net/blog/ Suyog

    ROFL. Its the Brits. What can we expect :D hehehe – this is surely the worst logo for any sport I have seen, let alone olympics. Beats the cricket 2007 world cup mascot fair and square… and I thought the cricket one was the worst one!

    S

  • http://uberdesi.com Santosh

    Yikes. I could throw up on a Mumbai street and come up with a better logo.

  • http://www.ipatrix.com Patrix

    Suyog, the cricket 2007 logo and mascot was horrible too but at least it isn’t hyped up as much as Olympic logos are. I frankly can’t imagine what the jury was thinking.

    Santosh, heh. It is indeed astounding how absolutely no one likes this logo. Some of the public-submitted logos were far better…even the Goatse one :)

  • http://sampada.livejournal.com Sampada

    I’m trying to see if I can make any sense of those spike-y figures. But I can’t find a hidden meaning. Maybe that’s the beauty of it…?? Okay, no there’s no beauty anywhere in that monstrosity. Even a child can do better than that. Or even a non-artist!

  • http://www.ipatrix.com Patrix

    Sampada, if the logo had looked good or beautiful by any standards and not meant anything, I would have still liked it. This logo fails on multiple levels.

  • http://palscape.wordpress.com bongopondit

    The logo is not only hideous, the animation version is causing people to have epileptic fits. What were they thinking ?

  • http://www.ipatrix.com Patrix

    bongo, nice to see you around after a long time. I read about the epileptic fits…now there is even a biological reason against it :)