Blog << Clear January - Mark Caudell, designer of user friendly, accessible websites on budget for the masses.

The London Olympics 2012 Logo

Although I dislike the logo, they keep banging on about it not necessarily being a logo, but more of a brand. A brand is always more than the sum of what you can see in the logo and as Sir Sebastian Coe says it's trying to engage with the youth of the country and London. In that respect I think that it's trying too hard in that it's very obvious looking at it that those shapes and colours are in fashion with the youth of the moment. In five years time those people attracted to that style will no doubt be the same people repulsed by it's then uncool colour palette and silly sharp edges.

Who's to say that they know this will happen and as either a get out clause or an acceptance of the fact, they have said openly that the logo will evolve almost saying we're trying to get today's youth on side so that they can evangelise the youth to come that being involved in the this project is a good thing. So in that respect it's a very clever idea/brand to have developed.

Remember as well that the people in charge of this project, the client, are people that would have wanted a say in what the logo looked like and what it stood for and we all know that the client isn't always right. The project took a year. That wouldn't have all been development and thought process time, that would have been meetings, meetings, meetings, everyone having their say and in the end the concept that Wolf Olins may have come up with could well be now so diluted that it's ended up being as obvious as it is now.

The problem is that they've not explained why and where they've come from to get to the design they've put together so people are taking and making their own opinions of it with regards to the immediate youth/cultural climate. Instead the spokespeople have merely tried to defend the logo showing that they don't know what's going on with it either. There should almost have been a separate microsite devoted to the logo and the brand so that they could convey the message of what it's all about through interaction, video, interviews, funky design and a good user experience. With that people wouldn't have to make their own minds up, they could simply be told what to think. That would have solved this whole issue and if there's one thing the government like to do it's tell us what to think, but that's another story (blog entry).

A quick jolly over to Wolf Olins' website shows they don't want to tell people what it's about/don't know what it's about/or are just damn creative if you don't understand it then you don't deserve to look at it anyway.

So, what do I make of it? I don't like it visually but if I'm right about it then I like the concept/brand. I just think it could have been executed better as a project. I just feel a little sorry for the guys at Wolf Olins if they don't appreciate paradies because they're going to be coming thick and fast.

Labels: brand, debate, design, logo, olympics