Okay, so I know I'm late as all hell coming into this little debate about the London 2012 logo for the Olympics, but I was reading loads of stuff up on it last night and just couldn't go on without spouting my opinion. So here goes.
The first reaction of pretty much everyone save five year olds? Disgust. It's blocky, primitive, squintingly bright and really just quite ugly. It looks like it came from it's other part time job of bouncing around in the background of the credits of of old Saved by the Bell episodes without changing costume. So pretty much everyone was in agreement that it was awful save the company who designed it and the people who shelled out 400,000 pounds ($800,000) to the company who designed it. Their deal? They want to attract the youth who apparently suddenly like the garish.
But then some design people began to speak out. "It's daring!" they cried. "Innovative!" "Cutting edge!" Basically they feel that design trend is headed back in the '80's direction (God forbid) and that in 2012, this will be ultra chic. Or something. Also it's got everyone in such an uproar so it must be cutting edge, right?
Wrong. This is why I am grossed out by the design world at the moment. First off, it's a ruddy logo. How cutting edge does it really need to be? I mean, I suppose there are some instances where logos can break ground, but for the Olympics? Why? Who cares? It's the Olympics, not the resistance against the Apartheid. Secondly, this is not cutting edge. It's straight out of 1985. Yes, perhaps they took a risk when they decided that the trend was turning this way and such, but other than that this really doesn't seem like anything new to me at all. And anyway, it shouldn't matter whether or not "design" is "turning" that way. I believe that there are simple rules of aesthetics and that this design doesn't follow any of them. I believe that no matter the trends in 2012, this design is ugly now and it will be ugly then. However, this sort of thing happens in art all the time. I see it in students at my school. These days the primary is the idea behind a piece and secondary if not at all is the way it looks. This irks me beyond belief. I know that art can be both compelling mentally and aesthetically and when someone produces something that is only one of the two things it tells me that they either haven't thought it through enough or they haven't the skill to make it beautiful. The things that last are the things that do both.
So good job London. I officially do not want to go to grad school there now. I heard some rather negative things to this effect from my friend Vivian who went to Chelsea School of Art for a semester (they didn't even have easels!) but this just confirms it. Stupid blowhards.
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