hey don't knock it - it took a roomful of marketing mba's to come up with that crap....

leslie

the issue of photonicepileptic seizures has been around for over a decade, in fact it started with computer games and the incessant interlace flickering..

certainly some "designs" or deliberate flashes can trigger seizures, and theres no denying that these can be amended to be safe for epileptics, however in many cases, interlace flickering, be it as fast as it is, can be as much damage.

This is why i only shoot in progressive scan, as i have had MANY clients over the last ten years tell me that interlaced video gives them headaches. Only recently were we able to work around this when progressive scan digital video was made affordable

in regard to this logo, IMO my 3yr old can come up with somethign more arthouse..
pink and yellow stand out like a bad thumb and even if ur not epileptic, the design is enough to make one nauseous..

>Good point but how do we test to make certain our work doesn't cause problems?

The first linked article does mention some kind of test that failed. Maybe one can actually run some test on your material. Hope it's free.

>Apart from that, that logo itself was nearly enough to give me a seizure.

Arrg! Agreed.

Where was Grazie when his country needed him?

Oh BOB! Don't get me started!! Please don't!!! Oh, stupid me! 'cos that's exactly what you wanted to achieve!

That is not only the biggest slab of pooh I've seen in a long long time, BUT there is a real fundamental issue that truly concerns me, and that is this: In the UK we pride ourselves on the ability to summon UP community involvement when needed - Dunkerque spirit and all that? Yeah? But here - HERE!!! For F$£%$^S SAKE!!! I am just sooooo pissed with the "authorities" you can only guess. No really, you can ONLY guess!!

What this identifies for me is an approach to "involvement" that is manifestly truly multifold in its ineptness. It just succeeds to "stumble" on just so many levels that it doesn't auger well for the actual 14 day event in 2012. Already, it would appear, the "organisers" have set camp and already taken on a lager/siege mentality towards this event. Oh yeah, and an event that I and a few other Londoners, will have to pick up the bill for - for the foreseeable future in the post-Olympics period!

How would I have worked it? Simple!

1/- Announce a UK/Londondcentric compo to devise a Logo for 2012 - and that it WOULD be open to ALL and everybody. We got Pop-Idol why not Logo-Idol??

2/- Let it be known that the selection and pruning down would be done over a period of months and that INITITAL idea would form the basis of the the pro-designers brief.

PERIOD! That's it. A simple and involving initiative - done!

But no.

Here we stand like Luther, naked to the world, with our designing cred around our ankles. Poor show - poor show indeed.

There is no doubt - NO DOUBT - that the UK has some of the best designers from skool to college to design-houses in the WORLD. And London, with ALL its fine art colleges AND extremely talented youngsters in skools - I KNOW this having spent five years as an arts manager for a very busy and multicultural inner London council - we could have, and most probably WILL now call upon to bring about a far better logo. Just as an aside, at one point, Londoners were just so pissed with this design, that alternatives were coming in at the rate of one every 3 seconds to the BBC!! Think about it!!?!??

And Leslie? Leslie? It was NOT 400,000 - it was actually 420,000!! For FS!!! My total non-revenue budget for the arts was £20k!! And for that we became a true beacon/lighthouse of excellence here in the South East and at the time pilot for best practice for the Arts in London. £420k??? Outrageous. Totally outrageous.

In actual fact, I kinda LIKE the energy of the logo. It is very "different". It just, IMO and those of few other Londoners (I'm saying a "few" - I'd reeeeeally like to know from the grass roots Londoners poll on this?) misses the point/poise/purpose and definitely PRICE of the event.

Where was Grazie when his country needed him?

Bob? You ain't close. Not close at all. Winging Pom? Me? Nah - I'm mad, MAD as hell!!!

Design is very important to me. I get really pissed with my own attempts. It is hard and requires much application. I could have given a few chaps a box of aerosols and they could have at least come up with the same and maybe better than this?? £420K? Nah! One Wall - box of aerosls, what £50 quid tops? A crate of "refreshments and a pile of sandwiches? Done!! Done deal!! I could have videoed the project and would now be selling it online to raise money for a further sports event for London!!

I would hope - HOPE! - this has made the "organisers" take a mental step backwards and say "Woah! We got that wrong .. . Hey? Aint there a bunch of Londoners out there? Hey I wonder if they could/would/wish to come up with an idea?" - and this, THIS would succeed on just soooo many levels!

So let's hiope that this IS a wake up call . . .

Rant over - mostly . . .

If you got this far, sorry for being tedious and noisy - blame Bob!!

Grazie

O.K, Grazie, not a bad ideal! ;-) --- Bob! ;-) Why did you let the UK committee spend >$420k for sometime that summons demons, looks like its from a "rotten" Apple invested marketing firm. ;-) No doubt Bob was behind the US Alt tax too! ;-) A pirate's war is starting sound good!

Seizures or not, that is one hideously ugly logo.

A little voice told me to do it, the same one that's still saying MIND THE GAP, MIND THE GAP. Hasn't stopped even after 5 years.

and an event that I and a few other Londoners, will have to pick up the bill for - for the foreseeable future in the post-Olympics period!

http://www.boltoneveningnews.co.uk/mostpopular.var.1447476.mostviewed.new_olympic_logo_what_do_you_think.phpand a few Boltonians[/link]

:~)

It wouldn't surprise me a bit if the logo design company being paid nearly a million dollars (400 GBP) for that disaster somehow have a kickback in place with at least one of the people who are on the committee who spent the budget on it.

(having lived in hawaii with all the rampant govt/public union worker corruption, I'm used to seeing lots of non-bid money spent on bribed officials' pet pork projects for their kickbacks)

And agree, a 3 yr old could do a better logo design than that. Trouble is, there's never a 3 yr old around when you need one lol.

that's a good point too, re logo/graphic design and interlaced footage etc, to be aware of to avoid health/seizure issues.... or at least good v bad taste in graphic design. The other logos shown from other cities/years, were mostly well done however - hopefully the replacement logo will be more professional.

ken

Here is a previous related discussion, with a link to a pubmed article regarding Pokemon.

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=497567

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1176371

I am not sure what I find so terrible about it but it sure is bad.

The colors? The disjointed shapes? The fact they spent money on it?
Thanks for pointing this out to us.

"I am not sure what I find so terrible about it but it sure is bad." ----- Maybe it's called having good taste, an eye for style,........... ;-) Probably the Ex-French president C payoff the marketing firm for revenge because of the UK winning the 2012 Olympics' bid. :-) The Ex was able to muscle the Germans to accepting the P.R. hit about the A380 bus +2year delay because of wiring "problems" with the German manufactured section. But the interesting thing was that the German section connected with everyone else electrical subsystems smoothly, just not with the French electrical connectors. I think I would trust the German's basic engineering work, ie, standard electrical subsystems as EU's top choice.

I have two points:

1. Be careful about supporting a ban because the material offends or potentially damages someone. Every film ever released that contains a strobe light scene should also be banned ("Flashdance" comes to mind). Some people throw up when watching "Friday the 13th." Should that be banned also? Nausea isn't as dangerous as epileptic seizures, but it's no fun either.

2. The logo was overpriced and amazingly bad, but so what? I think the I.M. Pei pyramid absolutely ruined the Louvre. Should we all throw stones through its glass windows? And as for being overpriced, that is class envy rearing its ugly head. Who is to say what it overpriced? When I was consulting I charged fees that even I couldn't believe people were willing to pay me. I am sure there are people that think I should give some of it back. I've heard that argument before and I'll bet good money that such a suggestion has been made in this case.

My advice: get over it. Some people make more money that you do, doing things badly that you could do ten times better, and at half the price.

If you try to pass a law to stop that, I guarantee that you'll be the first person the law will try to stop. Funny how that works ...

I agree about the price bit, we don't know the extent of the brief, it may entail more than just the logo design. Now that I've read more in depth though where I think where they've come unstuck is a big part of the brief was to appeal to a much younger age group. This issue has had some press down here, the Olympics is in danger of fading away because the group it appeals to is aging with the event, generation Y has no interest in it. One idea floated was to include skateboarding but the local lads were appalled at the idea, for them that'd kill their sport.
What this has to do with the logo is in general the young and rebellious are automatically going to reject anything dreamed up by an agency. Grazie's idea of a wall and free spray paint might have worked better, even if it produced the exact same logo,
From the little I understand about trying to appeal to a specific group is it doesn't matter if 60% of the popluation hate something so long as the other 40% love it. In this case I suspect 60% will hate it and the 40% (the younger generation) will simply ignore it.

Bob.

"If you try to pass a law to stop that..."

John, it's not a law, but clear guidelines in the UK:

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv/ifi/guidance/legacy/vrs_code_notes/flsh_imgs/gn_flash.pdf

ITC GUIDANCE NOTE FOR LICENSEES
ON FLASHING IMAGES AND REGULAR
PATTERNS IN TELEVISION

while i agree the logo is ugly (but what isn't to someone?), expecting people to design so that NOBODY has ANY issues is crazy & stupid.

I'll make something that I (or the client) thinks is good. Unless it goes way over "the line" (ie "DEATH TO WHITEY!", unless the point is to show the opposite/how stupid something is, such as a white man saying "DEATH TO WHITEY!"), i see nothing wrong with making it. In particular to this sign, besides the fact I find it ugly (maybe most brits don't & just jumped on the "I can do it better" bandwagon. who knows!), i wouldn't care if it caused seizures. It wasn't designed to cause seizures, it's just a logo. Even if I was making it to cause seizures, i wouldn't not make it. Perhaps I wanted to show how over sensitive people are about the remote possibility other people could be offended (there was an article in the local paper three days about about a homeless man who make his own bunker underground where he lives, make it his home. His sister read the article & was offended that the paper made an article on it. HE loved how he lived, why should SHE be offended? It never even mentioned his family with whom never talked to him!)

Wooo! They must have trashed the logo. It was found in pieces and recycled into a meds11.com ad!

http://www.toastedspam.com/logs/20070607141055g.jpg

Awful.