:120728: My captors have designed a new emblem for their international sporting event. I think they could have done better.

Dear London 2012 Olympics,

Let's talk about your logo. In the bidding process for the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, Kino Design created a lovely image of a ribbon of the Olympic colors weaving through "London 2012" in the shape of your iconic River Thames. It was simple and eye-catching. It clearly stated the city and the year. It had an Olympic feel. It reflected a unique aspect of the host city. It was everything an Olympic logo should be. Your logo for the actual Games, by Wolff Olins, not so much.

I understand that your goal was to reach young people. You probably should have asked some young people (or, you know, people) what they thought of the design. Young people aren't just bright colors and hard-to-read, though it may seem like that sometimes. Young people appreciate good design as much as the next person. Maybe more so. Ugly does not equal young. The BBC ran a poll in which more than 80% of those surveyed awarded the design the lowest possible rating. Maybe that should have been a hint.

There are many directions you could have taken with this logo business.

Early in the modern Olympic era, the logos were similar, and though they started out fairly plain, they soon transformed into more poster-like advertisements for the Games. Although not all of them succeed on all counts, most of them are simple, eye-catching, have an Olympic feel, and reflect the host city.

Posters eventually gave way to more logo-like representations of a particular Olympic Games, but for many years, each Games had both a logo and a poster (or several). Often, the posters and logos complemented each other, like your own 1948 Games.

 

That's a beautiful logo, by the way. You could have used the exact same logo again, and just changed the 1948 to 2012.

It's been done before.

Early logos were official-looking affairs, all monotone and seal-like. This is certainly the type of thing to be avoided if you're looking to appeal to a younger crowd, and yet the Olympic Games represent more than 100 years of international competition in the modern era. There's nothing wrong with honoring a little bit of history (like you did so well in your opening ceremony).

Another option would have been to make it painfully obvious that you're the host country. Make the Union Jack the focal point, so nobody can forget the London 2012 happened in the UK. This was the strategy taken by both Los Angeles Games, and two of the three games held in Japan.

Although it seems easiest to accomplish this with a Winter Games, you could have gone with a motif that represents the season, or a particular sport. Snowflakes, like Sapporo above, seem to be a popular choice. Lillehammer used a representation of the aurora, and though St. Mortiz was a Winter Games, the sunshine seems to work.

 

If you were going for appeals-to-youth, there's always the tried-and-true rainbow stylized athlete. I wasn't really a fan of this when I first saw it in Barcelona, nor have I been a fan all of the times it has appeared since then, but it seems to work. Again, we're looking for simple and eye-catching (and easy to read), Olympic spirit (Olympic colors, depiction of athletes, sense of movement), and reflection of the host city. All of these rainbow stylized athlete logos accomplish that.

A sport, a torch, or simply an abstraction (of strength, grace, movement, power, or an element of the host city). Simple and eye-catching. Easy to read. Olympic spirit. Reflection of the host city. More than one of the above are required for a good Olympic logo.

But I see what you were trying to do. You wanted the text itself to be the design. Well-designed text can make for an elegant, stunning, simple, powerful logo. But it's not easy to do.

Amsterdam did alright. Simple, easy to read.

Mexico did it better: simple, easy to read—add eye-catching, sense of movement, and a clever incorporation of the Olympic Rings into the year.

I wouldn't call either of these spectacular logos, but they certainly get the job done. Amsterdam's poster does a much better job (see above).

And yet, with over a century of examples, ranging from excellent to mediocre, you came up with this monstrosity. It hurts my eyes. Animated footage of it triggered seizures in viewers with photosensitive epilepsy. How many people approved the design before it became official?

It is eye-catching (in that seizure-inducing way), although it takes a while to figure out what you're really looking at.

The city is easy to read, though not capitalized. While in some cases lack of capitalization can look young, hip, and modern—in this case it just looks sloppy.

There is a sense of movement portrayed here, but instead of speed, agility, and grace as one would expect from an Olympic athlete, this movement evokes earthquake aftermath.

There is no Olympic spirit. The year is illegible. There is nothing to indicate the host city besides the word. The Olympic colors are absent. The colors of the host country's flag are absent, too.

It's not pleasing to look at. From a distance, it doesn't look like anything at all.

Now, London, I understand that it was a design firm and not you responsible for this particular design, but it's possible to make your design firm start over. It's even possible to fire your design firm and hire another one. Like maybe the one that did your candidate city logo. That one was nice.

I realize it's too late now, so just know that you've won the gold—for worst Olympic logo ever.

:120229: My captors keep reminding me of a great designer.

You know when you learn a new word, and then suddenly, you see the word everywhere? That's kind of what happened to me this week with Frank Chimero, only it wasn't the first time I had heard of him. I have proof, see, from my other blog, from back in the early days. So early, in fact, that the post was originally done on a platform that no longer exists, and then was transported to my other blog.
February 22nd, 2009.
Post number 10 on the second blog.
Post number 1 (!!) on its original venue.

State of Art
It's not that I'm trying to prove that I knew he was cool before anyone else. It's more that I'm trying to prove to myself that I have good taste, and that it was worth it to remember his name.

You see, that original venue was the ill-fated 1000 Markets. You've probably heard of Etsy; 1000 Markets was the same idea, except, well, beautiful. Selling one's wares involved a few hurdles (the site was curated; your product photos had to look good, or you wouldn't be accepted), which ensured that any page on the site looked clean and professional. I loved the way my products looked on 1KM. I loved the way everyone's products looked on 1KM. It became the shop I sent people to, because that's how I wanted them to see my products for the first time.

Unfortunately, it was not to be, and 1KM URLs now bounce to Bonanza. Double-unfortunately, Bonanza is ugly (I actually just poked around after typing that, to see if their site design had improved at all. I thought for a few moments that I was wrong, and they had improved—it didn't look so bad! But then I found the mother of all reasons never to sell my wares there: all-caps extra-large comic sans. In three different colors. Granted, it was an individual seller's shop policies, but it shouldn't even be an option. I didn't go hunting for it; it was the first item I clicked on).

But, back to my impeccable taste. So, Frank Chimera had a shop on 1KM, and I found his art and loved it, and blogged about it in 2009. What I didn't know (until I don't know, today maybe?) was that Frank was also responsible for the beautiful site design of 1000 Markets. Chimero said, "Artisanal selling is the only model of selling things where there's delight on both sides: delight in making, and then delight in consuming. It's a transfer of delight."

It turns out, delight is a bit of a specialty for Frank Chimero. You may have noticed that everything in this post that can be a link is a link, except for Frank's name. That's because I'm making you wait for the delight. His newly launched website, and this other thing of his I found, are absolutely delightful. You need to see them. I promise they're worth the wait.

But back to my story: so, 1KM was no more, and I couldn't find much on Frank Chimero back then, but I didn't really try that hard. Then this week happened. I read a LifeHacker article about creating your own personal (or professional) landing page.

And there he was. There is no link in the article. There is nothing to indicate that this is Frank Chimero, other than the blurry name in the picture.
As far as I can tell, this personal / professional landing page doesn't even exist anymore—at least not in this form. Then, posted a week later, but it's possible I saw them the same day, was this mention of Frank's newly redone website on Swiss Miss.

So take a few minutes for the delight. (Frank has changed his page. No more delight. Sorry. The link in the next paragraph is still pretty great, though). Scroll down. Slowly. Maybe a few times. Then come back here, because I'm not done showing you the awesome yet. http://FrankChimero.com

Are you back? Are you impressed by that delightful scrolley business? OK, now go here: Frank Chimero's Lost World's Fair: Atlantis. Scrolling all the way to the bottom of a ridiculously long web page has never been so delightful!

There are many interviews with this design master out there, and all of them leave you wanting to be a designer if you're not one already, or to be a better designer if you are. He just wrote a book: The Shape of Design, if you want to delve deeper. This talk he did at the Build Conference is pretty good, too, though I think his audience is a bit of a dud: they don't laugh at his jokes!

One more thing I found impressive, though not at all surprising: almost all of the websites I could find that feature an interview with Frank, or his art, design, or ideas, itself is an example of great design. It's reassuring to see that the people who praise Frank Chimero the most actually know what they're talking about. They recognize great design because they strive to create it themselves.

Below are some of my favorite well-designed sites talking about Frank Chimero:

Oh, also The Mavenist is pretty awesome. Frank explains what it is here, using my all-time favorite exchange from The West Wing as an analogy. Can this fool get any better? Oh, wait, he's a Portland boy, so—yes, yes he can.

:110222: One thing my captors love, and it happens nearly every time:

I go to a live performance, and find a little unexpected treasure. You know, like when you go to a concert with an opening band you've never heard of, and now the opening band is one of your favorites, like these blokes.

So, a little while ago (OK, August 2009), I went to see some live ballet in Washington Park accompanied by the Portland Cello Project. I love me some cello, and there's almost nothing better than free performances in parks. It seemed like a lovely way to spend a summer evening.

The unexpected part was this little bit at the end where Brian Perez lent his voice to the lovely collection of cellos. The cellos started out slow and haunting, and as John Brophy's bass guitar began, Brian Perez let loose that voice of his. I was taken aback by the clarity and power Perez packed into each note. Even with the wide open outdoor venue, and me sitting near the back of 3,000 people, Perez effectively filled the space with his slow croon.

I thought to myself, "who is this guy?" I didn't really wonder why I'd never heard of him. I don't really pay attention to these things. Interestingly, though, I haven't heard anything about him since. It seems Brian Perez is well known (on the internet, anyway) for that particular song, but there's not much else about him out there. No solo career, not much in the way of other songs that aren't bad video of karaoke. Oh well; I'll have to be satisfied with that one live performance.

You can see a video on YouTube or Vimeo of Brian Perez singing "One More Try" with the Portland Cello Project at the Doug Fir, or a lower quality video of the same song in Washington Park, where the above photo was taken. The Portland Cello Project's latest album is available now.