Since we last covered the London 2012 Olympic Logo, we received many quarrelling comments about the concept and design of the logo. Though, the reaction was inevitable, the intensity however, was least expected. It was not only LogoBlog that experienced such phenomenon, but this ‘British embarrassment’ was widely seen and heard all over the Internet. It so happened that within hours of its initial launch, the London 2012 Olympic Logo was largely rejected by many sects of the British society, including a large number of designers.

Moreover, the whole world later joined the British denial by means of a petition started to have the London 2012 Olympic Logo removed. More than 50,000 people have had signed the petition when it finally closed on June 6, 2007. On the other hand, the committee is not contemplating the reaction of many disgruntled people, but are stubbornly sticking to their decision and announcing that the London 2012 Olympic Logo is “here to stay”. Yet, one thing is certain that the London 2012 Olympic Logo has managed to gain popularity in ways no other Olympic logo had ever.

In its official press release, the 2012 London Olympic Committee had this to say about the London 2012 Olympic Logo:

“The new emblem is dynamic, modern and flexible, reflecting a brand savvy world where people, especially young people, no longer relate to static logos but respond to a dynamic brand that works with new technology and across traditional and new media networks.”

However, on the contrary, the general public doesn’t cite such strong and enthusiastic words:

Hitesh Mehta, a communication designer, says:

My first and last impressions on this logo were:
First Impression: Is this a logo?
Last Impression: Is this a logo?
Branding is all about trust, emotion, values, attachment with the people using your brand and understanding the brand as whole, apart from huge investments. Do not try out something extra-ordinary or for the sake of showing how different and innovative one can be, you will end up with blunders like this logo.

John Chan commented:

What a mess! It’s ugly and has nothing to do with the Olympics. It gives off a vibe, which is crass and tasteless - full stop. Horrible colors and aggressive lines. What wally thought this was the best one??

Steve described it:

This logo reminds me of those decade/two decade old television designs with the random jagged edges, bright colors, etc. This is not a modern, open logo. It’s just highly outdated and unimaginative.

Wallace has this to say:

I think it’s junk. Junk would be ok, but a million-dollar junk seems outrageous. Who, in what board meeting, sat around and said, “Oh, yes, that’s worth a million dollars”. He further added: “I don’t think it symbolizes the Olympics. Maybe it symbolizes the collapse of Western Civilization as it squanders precious resource on pointless abstraction while patting itself on the back at the same time. Or maybe it’s just a really bad call.

But above all, I found this guy’s (or gal’s), who didn’t tell us his or her name, comment the best so far, which ironically conveyed an intended meaning perfectly.

S/he says:

If a budget logo designer provides a customer with something like that, he’d be accused of being a scammer.

This worldwide disregard of the London 2012 Olympic Logo isn’t just limited to verbal criticism, but is also subject to physical change, though not officially. In steps to protest more against the logo and/or to publicize it, the Daily Mail, Britain’s second largest selling newspaper, invited the general public and designers to come up with their own version(s) of the London 2012 Olympic Logo. This invitation received a huge response. Here we present some of the logo designs the Daily Mail received:

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In the first week of November 2007, Enterprise IG announced that it has been renamed The Brand Union. According to Simon Bolton, worldwide CEO, the new name and identity are a move towards aligning the 21 offices around the world. The Brand Union came into being as “Enterprise IG” in 1996, and was the productive outcome of numerous design agencies.

The Brand Union’s new symbol is a unique representation of the letters or counterforms that spell the words ‘brand’ and ‘union’. Their arrangement speaks for the bringing together of people, their ideas, touchpoints that brands need to thrive and above all, unification. The use of the blue and gray colors symbolizes sobriety and clear-headedness.

The fresh values set by The Brand Union are: ‘Curious, Gutsy, Grounded and Inspiring’. The Brand Union is developing the principle of being master brand builders; striving hard to be unified, as the name implies.

The new graphic language and logo of the Brand Union were developed by an internal design team led by Wally Kratz, executive creative director - US division. The Brand Union has created many identities and performed several brand building exercises for large corporations like American Express, Absolut, Toyota, Bank of America, Unilever, Motorola, Vodafone, Credit Suisse, Masterfoods, Hewlett Packard and KPMG. The recent clients include GE, Samsung, and China Mobile.

Note: The Brand Union is an international brand and design agency with a network comprising of 500 people across 21 offices. The corporation offers services in a wide range of scopes including branding, imaging, designing, and market research and evaluation. It is headquartered in London, with a significant presence in countries spread across Europe, Asia, Middle East, and the USA.

Of all the design applications that are being used commercially, Adobe Photoshop is the most popular, extensively used and widely appreciated. Recently, the Adobe family suddenly decided to change its Photoshop logo and this face lift has not been successful in achieving appreciation (or even approval!).

The old Photoshop logo was a simple one, with just a ‘P’ and “s” written in white, with a blue background. Its size was somewhat more compact and smaller if compared to the new Photoshop logo.

The new Photoshop logo has a distinct, readable font with ‘Photoshop’ in a large font and the slogan ‘See what’s Possible’ in a smaller one at the bottom.

The font of the new Photoshop logo is bold and distinguishing and the three dimensional icon seems to present a ‘P’ in its speech bubble like appearance. The logo size is small whereas the font is large and prominent. The new Photoshop logo seems to spread out if compared to the previous compact one. The colors used are the same, i.e. white and blue (in lighter tones, though!), but the new version of the Photoshop logo has black added to it as the font color, which gives a more formal tone to the logo and makes the font prominent.

However, after all the creativity exercise, this new Photoshop logo has received a lot of criticism. Everyone was well associated with the previous, simpler version of the Photoshop logo and the condemnation is basically over the speech bubble. What does the Photoshop logo have to do with a speech bubble? And what is the hole trying to imply? These questions remain a mystery to the millions of users of this golden digital imaging standard. According to many, instead of creating a professional outlook, Adobe has unfortunately come up with an amateur look for its Photoshop logo.

About Adobe Photoshop:
Adobe Photoshop is a graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Systems. It is the current market leader for commercial bitmap and image management. Known as the industry standard for graphics professionals, Photoshop is the flagship product of Adobe Systems.

About Adobe Systems:
Adobe Systems Incorporated is an American computer software company. It develops and markets various design softwares including the widely used Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Flash Player, and Adobe Acrobat. The company recently acquired its long time competitor, Macromedia, a graphics and Web development software house, producing similar design and imaging products.

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Chicago has finally come up with a logo design that is intelligent, exotic and most of all according to the IOC standards. The new Chicago Olympic logo is without the torch; however the identity is still prolific with a six pointed star taking center stage. This icon is similar to the star in Chicago’s flag.

The revamped Chicago Olympic logo was presented on Wednesday, September 19th amid a lot of fanfare at the Walt Disney Magnet School. The new logo was unveiled by the Mayor of the city joined by a group of famous Olympians.

Earlier, the previous logo that featured the Olympic-style torch was ruled out by the International Olympic Committee, as it was against the Olympic emblem/logo rules which state that candidate city logos cannot contain any Olympic symbol. This includes the Olympic flag as well as any other imagery related to the Olympics such as a flame, torch, rings, medal, and so forth.

Fortunately this decision was taken in their stride by the official Chicago 2016 team. They understood that the IOC was only trying to safeguard and carry on the Olympic movement. Thus they decided to formulate a brand new Chicago Olympic logo for the international phase.

Just like the previous one, the new Chicago Olympic logo, was designed free of cost by Chicago based VSA Partners. Even though the imagery has changed, the color palette has remained the same.

According to the design team of the Chicago Olympic logo, the colors were kept the same as they maintained a brand identity. Also, the slogan “Stir the Soul” will continue to be used. The dominant white star in the new Chicago Olympic logo symbolizes a beacon and guiding light perfectly. It also represents athletic greatness.

The star on the Chicago Olympic logo is set against bands or ribbons of color, which signify award ribbons and medals that athletes achieve in the games.

The color palette is used to denote the same concept portrayed within the previous logo; the yellow represents the city’s architecture and sky line. The red color is employed to show passion for sports whilst the green and blue below stand for the city’s parks and the Michigan Lake respectively.

The points of the Chicago Olympic star are meant to be a symbol of hope, harmony, respect, friendship, excellence and celebration.

According to the Mayor of Chicago, the new Chicago Olympic logo will become “a great symbol for the city and nation”, as they strive towards attaining the opportunity to host the Olympics and Paralympics.

Further moderations within this logo can be expected if the city is short listed as a final candidate next year. Most likely, it will win the right to include the Olympic rings into its logo.

The new Chicago Olympic logo is a highly visible, striking and recognizable identity for Chicago’s bid efforts. The imagery as well as the pertinent concepts it presents prove to be very successful. The new logo has been received well by most and VSA have shown us that a hat trick can take place by finding a worthy replacement for the torch in the Chicago Olympic logo.

Note:Chicago is a candidate city in the United States bid for the 2016 Olympic Games. The final selection will be made by the International Olympic Committee on October 2, 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark from a bunch of international contenders.

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The National Football League (NFL) has recently decided to launch a makeover of its red, white and blue “NFL Shield” logo, as announced by Lisa Baird, the NFL’s senior vice president of marketing.

The current design of the NFL logo dates back to the 1940s, and has had no change since the last two decades. The logo consisted of twenty five stars, and carried an overall soft image.

The redesigned shield, however, will be slightly taller and thinner, displaying darker colors than the previous logo. The latest version of the NFL logo shows a new crisper football, resembling the one on the Vince Lombardi championship trophy.

The most significant change in the NFL logo will be seen in the number of stars. There will be only 8 stars in the new version of the NFL logo, representing the eight divisions or sub conferences of the league. Due to the reduction in the number of stars, NFL vendors (Reebok, Riddell, Wilson, EA Sports and etc) must be really content with this new change, as they were facing trouble indenting so many stars onto trophies. They also had to shoehorn the same onto everything from player jerseys to fan T-shirts and hats, uniforms and licensed merchandise. This makeover of the logo is the first such attempt to the shield since 1980.

Currently, the NFL and design and branding experts and critics are waiting to see how football fans react to the change in the NFL logo, after all not every change is a good change and it takes a while to accept what’s new. Though, from a designer’s perspective, the transformation in the NFL logo is a marked improvement from the previous version. The sharper font, darker colors and the use of fewer elements in the shield, makes the NFL logo look bolder and distinguished.

About NFL: The National Football League (NFL) is the largest and most celebrated professional American football league. It was formed by eleven teams in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association and was named NFL in 1922. The league presently comprises of thirty-two teams from all over America, divided evenly into two conferences - the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC).

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