London pictograms
October 16th, 2009

Well, they’re out and no doubt I’m well behind on passing comment, but I’ll do it anyway.

These are the pictograms for the various sports taking place at the 2012 olympics (although, where’s the golf one). I have to say I’m rather underwhelmed, but then I’m also in the ‘hate ‘camp for the games’ logo itself.

I have a few problems with them:

One is that they look so lazily done, like someone has found an image for each sport and simply drawn over it. Take a look at the basketball one, could it look anymore like those amazing photos of Michael Jordan in his high-flying prime?

My second problem is that at some point, someone seems to have thought ‘it’s getting late, what’s a quick solution’. Take a look at the one that I can only assume of for the triathlon (second row – second from right). In my mind that’s a person chasing their bike.

My third problem is a lack consistency in terms of scale, viewpoint and nearly everything else – things which are common in the well regarded versions of these olympic pictograms. Going back the triathlon icon, look at the bike again (quickly before it rolls away) and see how complex they have made it compared to the bikes for road, track and bmx.

In many instances, pictograms outlive an individual olympic’s visual identity in people’s memories. In this case I’m sorry to say we’ll still be talking about the logo long after these pictograms.