Warning: opinionated rant ahead.

I guess a lot has been said about the new London 2012 logo. I do have to give it to whoever authorised this logo as the new official one for the Olympic Games in 2012: it has brought a sense of unity to all Londoners. All of them think this logo totally and utterly sucks. United as one indeed. And rightfully so in my humble opinion.

The design bureau behind this travesty, Wolff Olins <sarcasm>beautiful website, by the way!</sarcasm> supposedly received a whopping £ 400.000 (yes, almost $800.000) for the London 2012 Olympics branding. I guess once you've made sufficient name in the market you can get away with anything these days.

For this staggering amount of money for which you can buy a pretty damn nice apartment in London they managed to come up with a logo that:

• has absolutely NOTHING to do with sports
• has absolutely NO Olympic feel except for the Olympic rings in it which seem to have been added last-minute
• has absolutely NO 'London' feel
• has absolutely NO British feel
• hurts to even look at because of the appaling choice of colours
• looks like a random set of shapes thrown together (it's a good thing they explain it's the number 2012 somewhere in it or I'd never have guessed)

Just to show some contrast, take a look at the Beijing 2008 logo. It has a sports feel, it has a Chinese feel. It basically has what everyone would expect from an Olympics logo. Nice, classy and in style. All very much unlike the London 2012 logo.

According to the terms and conditions I'm not allowed to actually show the 'masterpiece' that is the London 2012 logo on my site which is why you'll have to look at it on the official website. I'm not sure I'd even WANT to show it in this post to be honest.

Now I'm not a 'branding expert' myself. I'm not even the greatest logo designer. When it comes to this however I feel pretty safe when saying "I can do better than that". Heck, my fiancee's 3 year old daughter Adisyn can most likely do better than this. When it smells like shit, it probably is shit. And that my friends I think this new 'brand' is.

Addendum

I stumbled upon an interesting discussion about it on Speak Up!. In the comments I saw someone from Coudal Partners link to an article in which they write how awesome this branding effort is and how it's worth every penny. I posted the following thought that I'd like to repeat here on my own blog:

It's amusing how high profile agency A (Coudal) is defending the work of high profile agency B (Wolff Olins). Lots of nice words but let's look at the basics.

The Olympic games were historically intended as an event for 'the people'. And guess what? 'The people' absolutely HATE this branding effort.

Ergo, mission failed. Completely. It's one of those things that only those who 'know this stuff' appreciate. Unfortunately that doesn't do it for the rest of the world, no matter how many paragraphs of nice words are being written about it on agency A's website.

I hate this logo. But even if I'd love it I'd consider it a failure because of the simple fact that the ones for whom it was made (the general audience) think it's crap. Hard to deny isn't it?

So, what do you think?

update: The travesty doesn't end with this ugly logo. Apparently the promo video causes epileptic seizures among those who are sensitive to that.