Perry de Havilland has some innocent fun with a newly introduced logo:
What does it look like to you? To me it is obvious: a collapsing structure of some sort, perhaps a building at the moment of demolition. The sense of downwards motion towards the bottom of the page is palpable.
Breathtaking. I mean what truly magnificent symbolism. The entire Olympic endeavour has been a massive looting spree with already grotesque cost over-runs (and it is only 2007), so surely something that conjures up images of collapse and disaster is really on the money . . . and speaking of money, at £400,000 (just under $800,000 USD) for the logo, it perfectly sums up the whole 'Olympic Experience' for London taxpayers.
It should go without saying that he's not a fan of the Olympic project . . .
Update, 6 June: James Lileks has a few footling concerns:
Posted by Nicholas at June 5, 2007 01:14 PMSeriously, what is the matter with people who come up with this? And what is the matter with the people who approved it? Ads that showed the logos have reportedly caused seizures among British epileptics, but I think this thing would make a fossilized femur bone suffer convulsive muscle spasms. If you can't tell, it’s the year of the London games — 2012. I think it's also meant to imply a human form — say, a discus thrower, or a runner bursting from the blocks. Whatever it is, it's an aesthetic catastrophe, and would seem to indicate there's no one around in the London Games who had the nerve to bark "rubbish, that; try again, and give me a proper logo with some bloody numbers." I think there's a point at which people lose the ability to pretend they have any sort of aesthetic criteria, and embrace whatever's loud and ugly simply because loud and ugly is the style of the times. There's always a fair amount of coin to be had for dissing the traditionalists, of course; I imagine that if someone submitted a logo with a flag or a bulldog they would have suffered a gentle sneer: still pining for the empire, eh, Smithson. Well, Kipling's dead. Yes he is. Dig him up, you'll find Posh Spice's heel stuck in his heart, the coffin stuffed with I Heart Diana memorial teddy bears.
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