An Olympic ring, for that matter. The new London 2012 Olympics logo has certainly sparked some interest. Well, "interest" to say the least, because it’s more and more looking like murderous rage. People are claiming things such as "My kid could have done that!" and "This looks like it was done by a bunch of drunken four-year-olds", and today some newspapers are even saying that the animated version of the logo can cause epileptic seizures. There is also an online petition demanding that the logo be taken down and it’s authors purged by holy flames in the witch’s pyre. Ok, so that last part about the holy flames wasn’t so truthful. Anyway. As I read all of this I mentally prepared myself to see something so incredibly bad that suicidal instincts would kick in. And, for the first time I saw it, they did.

But then I looked again. And another time. And another. It’s still an awful logo, but I’m not so shocked anymore. The little bugger grows on you, I guess. I’m not saying I like it, in fact, quite the contrary. Sure, most of the logos from past games suck, but then again, most were design by commitee products, so one can only hope for so much. Not this one though. A company, Wolff Ollins, is fully behind it, and they reportedly charged a whopping £400k (something like €590.000,000). I genuinely can see where they were coming from, I do. I think it was a remarkable effort (and a difficult one as well, from my perspective as a designer) that they managed to stay away from designing around cliche topics like the country’s most famous landmarks or it’s rich cultural and artistic (and, ironically, cutting edge design) history. They tried to create a "hip", grafitti-like and ultimately timeless logo, but unfortunately it ended up looking like a bunch of middle aged men trying to be "down" with all those "youngsters" they’re trying to sell stuff to. I imagine that, if current trends continue, by 2012 the logo won’t look so dated, and it does communicate that the Games are about internationality and multiple cultural backgrounds by denying to mark the logo as inherently British. However, it will also still look like crap (of course, I could be wrong, everyone will worship the logo by then, and I’ll be out of a job). By the way, according to the official explanation for the logo, the squarish thingies in the logo spell out "2012", and, with a bit of imagination (you can notice best in the blue coloured one, I think), they do.

So much attention being drawn to the logo has astonished graphic designers all over. Fact is, we aren’t used to so much media focus being given to our profession. Sad thing is, when mainstream media do go out of their way to speak about design, more often they do so in order to bash and demonize the profession, instead of drawing the plaudits to the numerous daily miracles it produces. Still, all this whipping and tossing in both online and offline media has been met with a lukewarm response. Wolf Ollins has kept silence on the matter (and, like Adrian Shaughnessy says in his article for Design Observer, why shouldn’t they? They probably haven’t been so busy with calls from prospective clients trying to get a seat in the media wagon in years!), and the Olympic Commitee led by Sebastian Coe stated that they weren’t expecting such a dismal reaction and that the logo "will evolve" with the passing of time. Maybe, by evolve, they actually meant blasted into oblivion. If the logo stays that way, here’s one less shirt they’ll sell. Or maybe 500.000 less.