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Olympic Heights
It's hip, it's retro--and it comes at the bargain
basement price of £400,000 ($790,000) in taxpayer cash. It's the
London 2012 Olympic logo, unveiled last week. In among the abstract
pink archipelago of shapes you might spot the year "2012." No? As
Olympics organizing committee head Lord Coe
explained to the BBC:
It won't be to everybody's taste immediately but it's a brand that we genuinely believe can be a hard working brand which builds on pretty much everything we said in Singapore about reaching out and engaging young people, which is where our challenge is over the next five years.
|6.15.07 @ 2:42PM|#
it's a brand that we genuinely believe can be a hard working
brand
Well, some firm must have had a mighty powerful brand to be able to
get $790,000 for a piece of crap that any graphic-design undergrad
would gladly have created for free.
|6.15.07 @ 2:47PM|#
You libertarians shouldn't have a problem with the logo since the Olympics is a private organization. Right?
Jay Tee|6.15.07 @ 2:50PM|#
Hah! Privately run, but flushed with public cash, graft,
corruption and government subsidies. It's really OK to loathe the
Olympics and all the crooked shennanigans they entail.
Not to mention that this logo is complete ASS. Looks like a bad
design from the 80s. Completely embarrassing that they ripped off a
budget for that much lucre.
|6.15.07 @ 2:51PM|#
Yes, but Dan T. Preemptor, the London Olympics receives massive subsidies from the British government.
lunchstealer|6.15.07 @ 2:51PM|#
I thought it was Kanji for "who's dick to you have to suck to get a good Olympics logo?"
|6.15.07 @ 2:52PM|#
2012 will mark the return of ZOR!
All mortals shall tremble and quake before mighty ZOR.
|6.15.07 @ 2:52PM|#
To me it looks like a guy with a big nose and a ponytail waving with his right hand and 'batin with the left.
|6.15.07 @ 2:53PM|#
You know, Dan T. Preemptor, just because its a private organization doesn't mean we can't comment on how stupid the logo is.
|6.15.07 @ 2:53PM|#
Don't remember where I read it, but someone suggested it looks like Lisa Simpson giving head... Now every time I see it that's all I can think of.
Doc|6.15.07 @ 2:55PM|#
Like we should be so smug after Izzy, the mascot for the Atlanta
games:
http://www.izzypins.com/history.php
I still remember the stunned silence that met the announement
following the graphic that showed a cartoon blob. It just
screamed:
We have no effin' ideas.
Rhywun|6.15.07 @ 2:59PM|#
it looks like Lisa Simpson giving head
OMG - it does!
What's that "thing" in the center supposed to represent? (I mean,
according to the artist...)
Rhywun|6.15.07 @ 3:00PM|#
Why is public art so got dam ghastly?
Because in attempting to please everybody, it pleases nobody.
Episiarch|6.15.07 @ 3:04PM|#
How is it that no one, of all the people that must have been working for that 400 large, called bullshit on this? Is it possible that they are actually that talentless, stupid, and tasteless?
Jeff T, age: 21|6.15.07 @ 3:08PM|#
I've never seen anybody say what I'm about to say.
I actually really like the logo. It's new wave, electro-clash and
it fucking rules.
Rhywun|6.15.07 @ 3:10PM|#
I said:
No, we'll find that out in 2012.
Nuts. I meant "2008". Ruined an already bad joke. Sigh.
|6.15.07 @ 3:11PM|#
My first thought on seeing this was SNL's lampoon of the unveiling of NBC's "Stylized N" logo in 1976. It's pro'bly out there on video but the LAN police block me from accessing that from work. Anyone else remember it?
|6.15.07 @ 3:14PM|#
Why doesn't the Olympic committee use classical designs to, you know, hearken back to the Olympics?
anonymous|6.15.07 @ 3:15PM|#
the animated version:
http://img9.imagepile.net/img9/12224olympicgschpunken.gif
|6.15.07 @ 3:18PM|#
Anybody have the name of the company that designed the logo?? I would like to try for a freelance job w/ them :)
|6.15.07 @ 3:24PM|#
Don't remember where I read it, but someone suggested it
looks like Lisa Simpson giving head...
Oh my god, you're right.
ed|6.15.07 @ 3:28PM|#
a guy with a big nose and a ponytail waving with his right
hand and 'batin with the left
No, that's the official motto of the 2012 Olympics.
|6.15.07 @ 3:29PM|#
How is it that no one, of all the people that must have been
working for that 400 large, called bullshit on this?
Now, why would they go and do a thing like that?
Tom Brandt|6.15.07 @ 3:36PM|#
An animated version of the logo had to be pulled from the official website because it caused seizures in some people with epilepsy, according to The Sun newspaper.
NoStar|6.15.07 @ 3:38PM|#
Reading top to bottom left to right, it says ZION. I'll be cheering the Isrealis on to the Gold.
|6.15.07 @ 3:58PM|#
Jeff T, age: 21 | June 15, 2007, 3:08pm | #
I've never seen anybody say what I'm about to say.
I actually really like the logo. It's new wave, electro-clash and
it fucking rules.
You're right. I've never heard anyone say that.
Just what drugs are you using?
TWC
I think public art is bad because the artist does not feel an
obligation to please his customer and, for the most part, public
servants don't have the balls to tell the artist its crap.
|6.15.07 @ 4:00PM|#
For some reason, I'm reminded of the Waffen SS.
Must be a hangover from that flag salutin' thread.
|6.15.07 @ 4:12PM|#
it kind of makes me yearn for a pair of parachute pants, some fingerless lace gloves and day-glo hoop earrings...
History\'s Bunk|6.15.07 @ 4:26PM|#
Cut 'em some slack, guys.
What little of Europe isn't a mass grave with an anti-smoking
poster stuck on it looks like an Information Society video
set.
They don't have a lot to work with.
A-Ha Macht Frei!
|6.15.07 @ 4:37PM|#
And the really sad thing is that the logo used by the bid committee was actually quite nice - understated yet distinctive... (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:London-2012-logo.svg)
Gahan|6.15.07 @ 4:43PM|#
You know what would really be hip and cutting-edge is if they started spelling "Olympics" with an "x." And then maybe they could put a big "BEEEEAAAAATCH!" right after "London."
db|6.15.07 @ 4:53PM|#
It'd be more appropriate if the London Olympic logo read
"2112."
By then they'll have taken care of everything...
|6.15.07 @ 4:55PM|#
One paper in Britain said the logo looks like Maggie Simpson
giving oral sex.
What a godawful design.
Rhywun|6.15.07 @ 5:01PM|#
I think the animated version might be the funniest thing I've ever seen. Well, this week anyway.
|6.15.07 @ 5:08PM|#
"""2012 will mark the return of ZOR!
All mortals shall tremble and quake before mighty ZOR.""""
LOL, Warren you beat me to it!
|6.15.07 @ 6:41PM|#
reaching out and engaging young people, which is where our
challenge is over the next five years
So, they had to inflict this hideous logo on the world because
of the children???
|6.15.07 @ 7:03PM|#
I think they intentionally made it look like one of the Simpson
chicks giving head -- they were sitting around, toking and laughing
at ripping off those jackasses for so much money, and then someone
said, "Let's literally send those d-bags the message, 'suck this,
beeeatch!"
This plot would make a great episode of South Park, no?
Ron Hardin|6.15.07 @ 9:05PM|#
What's really odd about it isn't that it's ugly, but that it
can't be recognized as to its genre of logo or trademark at
all.
There's a law of genre, whereby a work announces what it is by
means that fall outside its genre (eg. a Western announces it's a
Western using means that are not themselves part of Westerns), but
this doesn't announce anything.
Perhaps that the cleaners haven't been there yet, is all.
|6.15.07 @ 10:31PM|#
"This plot would make a great episode of South Park, no?"
I was thinking the exact same thing.
|6.16.07 @ 9:24AM|#
I am one of those youths he speaks of and I don't find it
appealing. It is to trying in being stylish and it represents,
well, nothing at all?
If this is the symbolism they want to connect with the Olympics in
London, then I will anticipate an olympics devoid of any meaning or
art... what a no-brainer...
|6.16.07 @ 11:37AM|#
The logo immediately looked like a woman on the left with big
tits and a man on the right with a hard on trying to get together,
standing or laying, depending on how you turn your head. But maybe
it just reveals a dirty mind.
The Olympics is nationalistic ego bull crap that I want no part of,
and it is too hard to bet on.
|6.16.07 @ 1:31PM|#
Of course to the eternal shame of some of my friends and
colleagues London beat Tampa/Orlando to get these games. I still
think we won.
Actually I'm glad Tampa/Orlando was eliminated in the early rounds.
Otherwise i would have had to become publicly involved in a
campaign to stop them. I had our bumper sticker all picked
out.
JUST SAY N[Olympic rings here].
dhex|6.16.07 @ 4:44PM|#
dudes, i've looked at this thing for hours and i still don't see
the blowjob thing.
y'all a buncha pervs.
|6.16.07 @ 6:33PM|#
I am surprised that no one has mentioned "Springy", the
Springfield mascot.
http://koti.mbnet.fi/mupelo/springy.gif
Alan|6.16.07 @ 8:29PM|#
Erm... to me it looks like the real logo, following a major
'quake...
...or a whack with a twenty-pound sledge...
...or something. Just kind of -- fractured, somehow.
|6.16.07 @ 10:07PM|#
dhex
http://img9.imagepile.net/img9/12224olympicgschpunken.gif
for a visual aid...
The link is posted up above, but you might have missed it.
dhex|6.17.07 @ 9:56PM|#
yeah i still don't see it. looking a bit too deeply into the abyss, methinks.
|6.17.07 @ 11:51PM|#
I can see it, dhex. But then I'm probably more used to looking really, really hard for a blowjob.
Andrew Ian Dodge|6.18.07 @ 7:45AM|#
Well you look at that thing for long and you know what they
spent all the money on...lots and lots of drugs to come up with
it.
It accurate depicts the vomit most Londoners want to produce when
they see it and realise how much of their tax money is going on the
Olympics.
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