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Tessa Jowell declared herself, rather touchingly, "unusual" on the Today programme this morning because of her view that the logo is "terrific". Ken, on the other hand, was denouncing the team responsible for the epilepsy inducing brand film, suggesting they should not be paid and desperately trying to find a way to toe the Olympic line yet simultaneously maintain his fundamental derision of the actual design. We’re rather impressed with his effort, as quoted in The Metro:
It is a logo. It is not the meaning of life or a secret code that will identify the bloodline of Mary Magdalene.
Well, quite.
Meanwhile, hopefully cocooned from the ongoing cacophony of brand slagging, we imagine the IOC delegation, here on a 3 day inspection tour of London's Games preparations, were thrilled with the completed power cable tunnels up Stratford way and totally charmed by London’s lofty legacy promises which seem only to be missing the offer of the moon on a stick for everyone.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the Olympic-a-verse, Beijing 2008 gathers momentum (they’ve got a wibbly man logo and some cutesy animalesque cartoon mascots... aw, Jingjing the panda rocks.)
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I find it very disappointing that Ken Livingston (much like Simon Hoggart in Saturday's Guardian) is seemingly blaming the brand consultancy for the rubbish logo rather than the team responsible for commissioning it. A company like Wolff Olins doesn't just pull something like this out of their collective arse, it is a response to lengthy briefings, highly politicised discussions and client approval. (And in London - a city teeming with designers, you'd hope the mayor would be more astute) Someone gave the 'OK' to that logo and it wasn't the design company. If anyone is to blame it's the team responsible for deciding the direction of the project, unless of course, in some freak set of circumstances they just handed over a cheque for £400k and said 'Give us whatever,...you know something that visually says 'innit'...we're not too fussed'...I think that's highly unlikely. I also reckon the people making those decisions were paid more than the £400k spread across a large design firm.
Don't be mistaken, I think the logo's dreadful, I just think we should be more careful about who we blame.