About six years ago, I designed a large promotional print piece for the Washington D.C / Baltimore 2012 Olympic Bid Committee. I did the best job I could do with the materials I had to work with, yet I remain happy that the effort failed and the Olympics, in fact did not land here. Imagine that security nightmare.

In any case, when I stumbled on an article today about the actual 2012 logo for the London Olympics which was unveiled this past Monday, I was somewhat in shock. It looks amateurish, childish, unsophisticated, etc. As I continued reading, I was happy I didn't also suffer convulsions.

How does stuff like this happen? What are these people expecting?

There's an old adage that "there's no such thing as bad publicity." I have to disagree. There's an online petition including over 45,000 signatures calling for the logo to be scrapped.

To make matters worse, a promotional piece of animation featuring the logo is suspected as potentially triggering epileptic seizures, and had to be edited out of video footage, and scrubbed from the website. How ironic the logo encompasses the paralympic games as well.

Amazing.

Labels: identity design, olympics logo