The London 2012 Olympic logo: Officially hideous

Posted by Philip Barron at 10:00 AM on June 4, 2007.

If someone blew up Nelson's Column in the middle of Trafalgar Square and then applied garish spray paint to the rubble, the result would be something not unlike the newly-unveiled London 2012 Olympic logo.

The jagged emblem, based on the date 2012, comes in a series of shades of pink, blue, green and orange and will evolve in the run-up to the Games.

The word London and the Olympic rings are included in the first two digits of the new logo.

"This is the vision at the very heart of our brand," said London 2012 organising committee chairman Seb Coe.

Ah! The fragments represent numerals! 2012! And the logo is designed to "evolve" over time, perhaps more clearly revealing the date. Dynamism! Modernity! Or, uh, something.

Moral: Never give a committee £400,000 to do anything.

Comments at the BBC site indicate that the logo is not exactly winning over the British public:

Looks like a cross between underpass graffiti and a Sex Pistols album.

So Krypton factor puzzles, dodgy simpsons act, Tiswas lettering and Rubharb and Custard colours.

I'm a design consultant and usually open to new ideas - but that really is awful, its not a good sign that people are already apologising for it. If you squint your eyes it looks like a graphic of a pink Larry Grayson doing the 'I'm a little tea pot' dance.

Looks just like a window I recently kicked a ball through.

I'm guessing it will evolve. At the moment it represents our organisation of the games so far; an incoherent mess, and by 2012 the logo will look even messier. I mean, whoever came up with the idea of an evolving logo needs shooting.

I think the only sport its appropriate for is the beach volleyball event.

Evolve ?? Surely, something this hideous is an argument for Intelligent Design ? Nature couldn't have come up with it..

It's unspeakably dire. It looks rubbish and says nothing about London, England or the UK. A five year old could've done a better job.

Oh My God ! It's embarrassing ! I always used to look at other coutries logos and think, well, at least we could do a better job there..but no, it's dreadful. Words fail me. Will we have people on stilts at the opening ceremony too??

An utter joke! Britain used to be renowned for its design.

This is the equivalent of yer Dad dancing at a party, down wiv the kidz innit.

If this stands for the olympics, then there is little hope. It's childish, crass, dated and more like an advert for teletubbies than the global olympics. Why do people think loud colours and jerky writing mean the "young" will like it? Ridiculous. Do your research!

Dear god it looks horrendous. Perhaps the Parisians ought to have received the games after all.

My favorite:

I hope they can change it before anyone sees it.

Too late for that, I'm afraid.

Tagged as: united kingdom, olympics, london, 2012, great britain

Philip Barron is a St. Louis writer and author of the blog Waveflux.