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The 2012 Olympic Logo

by Pimp Daddy

SOME SWEARING CONTAINED HEREIN. YOUNG CHILDREN, PLEASE POKE OUT YOUR EYES NOW.

Today, on the 4th June 2007, the 2012 Olympic Logo has been.... 'unveiled'.

This is what it looks like:

My initial reactions to this logo are hard to recall, as incoherent and utter rage gives me temporary amnesia. I've had to think long and hard about how to articulate myself without lapsing into paragraphs filled with 'ARAGDHJfhsDJFKSJDHR!!!!!!!!!'

This logo is awful, terrible, and bad. I would use stronger language but you get the idea. This logo is so utterly worthless it makes me depressed about the fate of humanity. What makes it worse is that it cost £400,000.

£400,000

Surely, I must be joking, because nobody in their right mind would pay £400,000 for what appears to be the result of someone smashing their face into the keyboard while MS-paint was open.

This logo, if it stands for anything at all, is wholly representative about how wasteful the public sector of the UK is. Projects big and small in the public sector suffer from a criminal lack of planning, efficiency, and more importantly accountability. I know this because I work for a public sector institution, and have many friends that work for similar 'organisations' in the UK. Disproportionately large amounts of money are found, seemingly out of nowhere, and allocated to needless, pointless applications that are ultimately used by nobody and to no meaningful end.

The same is true here - look at this logo. What about this makes it worth £400,000? Nothing at all. This is the work of 10 minutes in Photoshop, if that. If I'm being enormously generous I'd price it at £50, assuming an extremely good graphic designer has billed me for 30 minutes of his time. I'm an extremely poor graphics designer, and I could make this thing in minutes.

Where has the cost come from then? Well, the other £399,950 comes from utter, utter bullshit. Allow me to elabourate by citing some quotations from 'officials' in regard to this logo:

I'm sorry everyone, we're doomed. We are all going to die. Why?

Because at some point in the future some highly dynamic and forward thinking branding company is going to give us a logo and branding that will purport to Fix the world, in every possible way. How? Well, it's amazing what branding companies can do - all they need to do is spend many, many months and charge hundreds of thousands of pounds to come up with an INNOVATIVE logo that SPEAKS TO US ALL and IDENTIFIES WITH US and the logo, all by itself, will do the rest. Branding - It's incredible.

Some of the above quotes speak about how the logo, seemingly by itself, will inspire, motivate, and drive people into action MERELY BY LOOKING AT IT. What I find the most depressing is that these people probably even believe what they're saying. They're so utterly blinded by the hyperbole of brand-speak that they haven't actually engaged any rational thought about how it looks.

Think about it - you're on the Olympic Organising-whatever-its-called and are responsible for things like this. You commission an extremely expensive branding company to create a VISUAL IDENTITY and they go away for a while, spend 10 minutes diddling in photoshop, return to you with utter tripe, and charge you £400,000 for it. But, along with the bafflingly bereft logo, they come to you with a pitch. They talk at you, and your colleagues, about how this logo is dynamic, how it encompasses the hopes and dreams of the population, and how more importantly it speaks to the CHILDREN.

Do you ignore the battering of bullshit and demand that they go back and rework it, presumably at additional cost? Or, does the pressure of the fact you've spent shitloads of money on this thing already convince you to lap up the ridiculous story you've been told about the logo's apparent virtues? The truth is that anyone in charge of a public-sector project is assigned more based on age (older is better) and 'good stature' rather than proven skill and bonafide experience in project management. Seb Coe is one such, because between me and you, he clearly doesn't have the first frigging clue.

Allow me to cut this short before I rant about the ills of society and how this logo exemplifies them all, and make a couple of very potent points that sum up how I feel.

1) What a logo actually looks like is IRRELEVANT (unless it looks like this).

2) No matter how much you spend creating a logo, it will achieve absolutely NOTHING unless a completely separate and genuine effort is made to achieve the 'real' goals. If you want kids to participate, go to their schools and try to convince them. A LOGO, NO MATTER HOW 'DYNAMIC' WILL NOT DO THIS FOR YOU. EVEN IF IT'S A REALLY REALLY EXPENSIVE ONE.

and finally

3) These goals would be more easily achieved if you had put the £400,000 towards them, rather than wasting it on some pretentious, pointless, wasteful piece of shit such as this.

Thank you and apologies, we will now return to your regularly scheduled snacks.