When the logo for the 2012 London Olympics was launched back in June 2007, Seb Coe, the London 2012 organising committee chairman announced, “This is the vision at the very heart of our brand.” Continuing his speech, with just a hint of advertising industry spin, “”It will define the venues we build and the Games we hold and act as a reminder of our promise to use the Olympic spirit to inspire everyone and reach out to young people around the world.”
He concluded with “It’s not a logo, it’s a brand that will take us forward for the next five years.”
The new logo, sorry brand cost about £400,000 and features a jagged emblem designed around the date 2012. It comes in shades of pink, blue, green and orange and was supposed to evolve in the run-up to the Games although I don’t see much change in the design. Initially the animated footage created to promote the design at launch caused epileptic seizures and had to be re-edited. It was also suggested the logo represented a sexual act and a swastika.
Anyway, the logo received mixed reviews from the trade and consumers alike. Steve Douglas of the logo factory said, “(it) looks like someone dropped a perfectly good logo on the floor and broke it.”
An ongoing BBC poll asked readers to rate the 2012 logo as Gold, Silver, Bronze or wooden spoon. At the time of writing, 10,384 votes have been cast with 79.82% rating the logo a wooden spoon.
And logo and marketing guru Seth Godin called it, “A slightly jarring, very bright piece of abstraction.” However, Seth preferred to focus on the spin finishing his brief comment, “If you are paying money to someone who talks like this (see above), may I suggest you stop? And if you work for someone who talks like this, time to look for a new gig.”
For the record I’m with Seth on this but what he, many others and myself didn’t realize was that apparently, the logo is actually a subliminal attempt at pro-Israeli propaganda and spells Zion. That is according to the Iranian Olympic committee and is the result of someone’s racist spirit.
The Iranian Olympic committee has written to the IOC claiming it is a revolting act and threatening to boycott next year’s Games in protest at the supposed use of the biblical term for Israel’s capital, Jerusalem.
And Gap thought they had a problem!
