Irma Boom has designed a new logo for the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, replacing the previous logo by Studio Dumbar, which had been in place for 32 years.
The above image, by Johan van Walsem, shows Boom watching the logo being unveiled on the exterior of the museum. Shown below is the new logo in full:
And here is the previous one by Studio Dumbar:
Speaking of her design, Boom comments: “My starting point was the fact that the Rijksmuseum is a national museum with international appeal. The design is clear and powerful and anchors the museum in the present.” Her design is clean and simple and puts clear emphasis on the Dutch ij digraph (more on that here), which was also a feature of the recently redesigned identity for the Stedelijk Museum by Mevis and van Deursen (see Michael Evamy’s CR piece, here).
The new Rijksmuseum house style also incorprates a newly designed typeface, developed by Paul van der Laan of the Bold Monday font foundry, and a colour palette which is based upon highlights of the museum’s collection. Below are some uses of the new logo on Rijksmuseum merchandise:
Boom, who is perhaps best known for her book designs, is also responsible for the design of all the publications for the new Rijksmuseum. Subscribers to CR can read more about her work in this feature, which appeared in the December 2011 issue of Creative Review.
A quarter of a century after its last update, Microsoft has unveiled a new logo as it prepares to launch a host of new products with a common look and feel
In a statement on a Microsoft blog, Microsoft’s general manager of Brand Strategy Jeff Hansen explained that “The logo has two components: the logotype and the symbol. For the logotype, we are using the Segoe font which is the same font we use in our products as well as our marketing communications … The symbol’s squares of colour are intended to express the company’s diverse portfolio of products.”
A video demonstrates how the new mark will work in animation.
1975 logo
1975-1987
1987 – present
This is the first time in 25 years that Microsoft has changed its logo. As we reported in our April 2012 issue, the company is in the midst of reimagining its approach to the design and branding of its products with the roll out of the Metro design language. Over the next year, it will launch new products including Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, new Xbox services and a new version of Office in which, Hansen says, “you will see a common look and feel … providing a familiar and seamless experience on PCs, phones, tablets and TVs”.
From today, the new look will appear on microsoft.com and in three of the company’s shops in the US.
Segoe, which was designed by Steve Matteson at Monotype, may not be the most exciting typeface in the world and the logo itself is hardly revolutionary but what is worth applauding here is the ongoing work that Microsoft has been doing across the business on its UI design and branding.
In various public pronouncements and blog posts, Microsoft designers have paid tribute to the influence not just of graphic design but of the Swiss International Style in particular in developing what has come to be known as Metro, the visual language based on clean typography and a grid system of coloured tiles that Microsoft has begun to implement across its products.
Metro has its roots in work done by various Microsoft design teams for the ill-fated Zune music player, Windows Media Player and even Microsoft’s Encarta encyclopedia software in combining graphic design, interaction design and motion graphic design to attempt to create a compelling user experience. But it was the Windows Phone team that developed those principles into a coherent design philosophy that is now being adopted across the group, including for Windows 8 OS.
Windows 8 start screen
The new logo comes out of this thinking and style. In our April issue, Jeff Fong, who was creative director on Windows Phone 7, explained how a team of designers at Microsoft started working on conceptualising a design direction and principles for the Windows Mobile redesign using transportation wayfinding as a major inspiration. “It’s a clear, direct visual language that helps people navigate a complex environment. Why not take inspiration from that and apply it to helping people navigate complex technologies?” he said.
The new interface, they decided, should be clean, light, open and fast. Unnecessary visual elements, including gradients and faux 3D were to be stripped out. Particular emphasis was to be given to motion, to the way in which one element transitioned to another, and to typography. And the interface would be ‘honest’ in that it wouldn’t be dressed up to look like real world objects or materials – no ‘skeumorphic’ shading or glossiness (Apple take note).
Windows 7 screen
For so many years, Microsoft’s graphic design has been about as stylish as its founder. With Metro it has developed a coherent, clean, considered typographically-led approach across its entire portflio of products. Moreover, it is one that rejects so many of the clichés of tech companies in favour of an attempt at least to learn from the masters of graphic design – in developing Metro, for example, the Microsoft team cited Vignelli, Müller-Brockmann and even Experimental Jetset as influences on their thinking.
This is not the most visually exciting piece of work that we will cover on this site, but there’s certainly something very interesting and ambitious going on at Microsoft and its approach to graphic design.
CR for the iPad Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app will also update with new content throughout each month. Try a free sample issue here
Please note, CR now has a limited presence on the newsstand at WH Smith high street stores (although it can still be found in WH Smith travel branches at train stations and airports). If you cannot find a copy of CR in your town, your WH Smith store or a local independent newsagent can order it for you. You can search for your nearest stockist here. Alternatively, call us on 020 7970 4878 to buy a copy direct from us. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 970 4878 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.
Parallel to the growing appreciation of food, we’re seeing more and more designers tackle the issue of how and what we eat, from product design to intensive research to enviable interiors. In this spirit of food-related creativity, a new London-based publication called The Gourmand offers a highly visual yet brilliantly understated journal of food and culture, something like Apartamento‘s foodie cousin. “The Gourmand was born as a means to share this exciting cultural shift and to celebrate food as a catalyst for creativity.”
Our friends at Sight Unseen highlighted perhaps the most relevant feature from the debut issue, which is available now: the collaboration between art director Jamie Brown and photographer Luke Kirwan. Brown’s expository text for “A 20th Century Palate” complements the compelling imagery to a tee: “There are few things that rival my insatiable hunger for colour and pattern, my appetite for food is one. Combining the two would surely go down well.”
The concept was born—to represent design movements of the 20th century through specially arranged plates of appropriate foods, finished with hand cut patterned paper table cloth backgrounds.
In anticipation of significant new releases across its expansive portfolio of product offerings, Microsoft has unveiled a new logo, the first major update in 25 years.
From Windows 8 to Windows Phone 8 to Xbox services to the next version of Office, you will see a common look and feel across these products providing a familiar and seamless experience on PCs, phones, tablets and TVs. This wave of new releases is not only a reimagining of our most popular products, but also represents a new era for Microsoft, so our logo should evolve to visually accentuate this new beginning.
The original 1987 logo
The design team at the Seattle-based tech juggernaut has reduced the iconic ‘waving’ flag ideograph into a rather more abstract array of four squares, Zen-like but for their colors. Similarly, the typographical decision to replace italicized Helvetica Black with Segoe feels a bit fresher, in keeping with contemporary brand identities.
Starting today, you’ll see the new Microsoft logo being used prominently. It will be used on Microsoft.com—the 10th most visited website in the world. It is in three of our Microsoft retail stores today (Boston, Seattle’s University Village and Bellevue, Wash.) and will shine brightly in all our stores over the next few months. It will sign off all of our television ads globally. And it will support our products across various forms of marketing. Fully implementing a change like this takes time, so there may be other instances where you will see the old logo being used for some time.
We’re excited about the new logo, but more importantly about this new era in which we’re reimagining how our products can help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential.
For a bit of commentary, our friend Don Lehman’s posted a bit of incisive industry insight into the new logo over at his Tumblog: “It’s a little generic, but nice looking. It’s clean and simple. It looks the way you would expect a Microsoft logo from 2012 would look like. Most people won’t know there was change. That’s a good thing.” (It’s also worth checking out the ‘Microsoft Inc. Logo History’ sidebar on Wikipedia.)
Every year we devote our September issue to showcasing work by a selection of bright young hopefuls emerging from education. This time, however, we thought we’d do things differently…
Instead of just interviewing each of our selected graduates, we’ve paired them up with a seasoned pro in their respective field. We asked them to interview each other for the grads to glean as much helpful advice from the professionals as possible, and for the pros to give helpful, realistic crits of each graduate’s work.
Our thanks go to Kirsty Carter and Stephen Osman of APFEL who talked to Leeds College of Art graduate Arthur Carey:
Matthew ‘The Horse’ Hodson who shared his insights with (also of Leeds College of Art) Sam Tomlins (the duo also took the time to submit portraits, each one depicting the other):
and to still life photographer Jenny van Sommers who gave invaluable advice to Megan Helyer, a graduate of Cleveland College of Art and Design. We’re very grateful to all of them for giving up their time for this project.
The idea, of course, with this series of articles is that they provide useful, perhaps even essential, reading for any young creative starting out and trying to establish a professional practice.
Also in the issue, Eliza Williams talks to the key players at Google Creative Lab to find out more about their working philosophy
And in Crit, David Crowley reviews the new Unit Editions book that looks at the career of the master US designer and art director Herb Lubalin.
Jeremy Leslie looks at how a new wave of magazines, such as the bilingual Figure, are using a central theme to explore the wider culture, and Michael Evamy takes a looks to identify the dos and don’ts of town and city branding
Meanwhile, Gordon Comstock asseses the vital role of failure in advertising as part of an essential learning curve all creatives must embrace.
Plus, in Monograph this month we showcase a series of typographic works (created especially for this issue of Monograph) by Jonathan Barnbrook all of which immortalise various tweets by Barnbrook offering advice to students.
Oh, there’s also a chance to win a one-off A2 digital print of one of these Aesthetic Sense artworks by Barnbrook on our regular Gallery page in the issue.
CR for the iPad Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app will also update with new content throughout each month. Try a free sample issue here
Please note, CR now has a limited presence on the newsstand at WH Smith high street stores (although it can still be found in WH Smith travel branches at train stations and airports). If you cannot find a copy of CR in your town, your WH Smith store or a local independent newsagent can order it for you. You can search for your nearest stockist here. Alternatively, call us on 020 7970 4878 to buy a copy direct from us. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 970 4878 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.
The furniture design of Charles and Ray Eames needs little introduction. But from its studio in California the Eames Office also produced graphics, film, photography and exhibition design. This lesser known side of the Eames oeuvre forms the basis of a new show which opens in London next month…
Eames Lounge and Ottoman poster, 1956
Addressing the Need: The Graphic Design of the Eames Office opens at the PM Gallery & House at Pitzhanger Manor in Ealing, west London on September 14.
Among the exhibits will be a selection of invites, brochures, posters, packaging designs, print and press advertisements, alongside several examples of Eames-designed toys.
Detail from double sheet of all Computer House of Cards faces, 1970
The complete Computer House of Cards double sheet, 1970
Examples of the duo’s film work will also be on display, notably Powers of Ten which explored the relative size of various elements that make up the universe. Designs for the Eames’ first interactive exhibition, Mathematica (1961), will also be shown.
Powers of Ten brochure cover, 1977
Powers of Ten brochure, page one, 1977
Powers of Ten brochure, page four, 1977
Exhibition Director of the Eames Office, Carla Hartman, says that the Ealing show will provide an “opportunity to showcase another, perhaps less familiar, side of the Eameses. Their graphic design work lured, informed, delighted, inspired, humoured, and, ultimately, addressed the need.”
Installation shot of the timeline from Mathematica: A World of Numbers… and Beyond, Los Angeles, 1961
Close-up of timeline from Mathematica, 1961
Addressing the Need open on September 14 and runs until November 3 at the PM Gallery at Pitzhanger Manor, Walpole Park, Mattock Lane, Ealing, London W5 5EQ. Entry is free.
A special Eames film screening event will take place on October 25. More information at the PM Gallery site at ealing.gov.uk.
Ray and Charles Eames with model of the exhibition, Mathematica: A World of Numbers… and Beyond, 1961
A 22 metre-long, hand-painted typographic mural in Walsall town centre combines wayfaring information and facts to tell the story of the West Midlands town in numbers
Manchester-based United Creatives worked with Urbed and the regeneration team at Walsall Council on the project which, according to United, covers a “previously dull stretch of concrete” on a shopping centre.
The consultancy says that “The new artwork aims to engender civic pride via a series of positive local facts” (such as Queen Elizabeth the First spending a night there). It also has a functional aspect, providing directions and walking times to local attractions such as Walsall’s arboretum.
The artwork was created using laser-cut stencils and micro-porous paint.
If the artwork is well received, it is hoped that it will be succeeded by a permanent, ceramic mural.
CR for the iPad Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app will also update with new content throughout each month. Try a free sample issue here
CR in Print The August Olympic Special issue of Creative Review contains a series of features that explore the past and present of the Games to mark the opening of London 2012: Adrian Shaughnessy reappraises Wolff Olins’ 2012 logo, Patrick Burgoyne talks to LOCOG’s Greg Nugent about how Wolff Olins’ original brand identity has been transformed into one consistent look for 2012, Eliza Williams investigates the role of sponsorship by global brands of the Games, Mark Sinclair asks Ian McLaren what it was like working with Otl Aicher as a member of his 1972 Munich Olympics design studio, Swiss designer Markus Osterwalder shows off some of his prize Olympic items from his vast archive, and much more. Plus, Rick Poynor’s assessment of this year’s Recontres d’Arles photography festival, and Michael Evamy on the genius of Yusaku Kamekura’s emblem for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.
Please note, CR now has a limited presence on the newsstand at WH Smith high street stores (although it can still be found in WH Smith travel branches at train stations and airports). If you cannot find a copy of CR in your town, your WH Smith store or a local independent newsagent can order it for you. You can search for your nearest stockist here. Alternatively, call us on 020 7970 4878 to buy a copy direct from us. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 970 4878 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.
The Vinyl Factory, in collaboration with The Mott Collection is staging an exhibition of 45 Kraftwerk single covers along with a limited edition publication (cover shown above)
The exhibition will be at The Vinyl Factory Chelsea gallery on September 13 until October 5, featuring 45 covers, from various European countries, drawn from artist and Punk historian Toby Mott’s pop culture collection (regular CR readers may remember we did a piece on his collection of Crass sleeves in our March 2011 issue).
A publication, limited to 300 copies worldwide, will accompany the show, again featuring all 45 covers. This will also feature a 7-inch disc of a 2009 Kraftwerk interview. Each book will be hand signed by Mott and numbered. They will be Risograph printed and ship on September 12.
Here are some sample spreads:
And more examples of some of the sleeves featured:
including this Hungarian release of Pocket Calculator from 1981
Most of the artwork for Kraftwerk’s sleeves was produced by German painter Emil Schult – see his site here
CR for the iPad Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app will also update with new content throughout each month. Try a free sample issue here
CR in Print The August Olympic Special issue of Creative Review contains a series of features that explore the past and present of the Games to mark the opening of London 2012: Adrian Shaughnessy reappraises Wolff Olins’ 2012 logo, Patrick Burgoyne talks to LOCOG’s Greg Nugent about how Wolff Olins’ original brand identity has been transformed into one consistent look for 2012, Eliza Williams investigates the role of sponsorship by global brands of the Games, Mark Sinclair asks Ian McLaren what it was like working with Otl Aicher as a member of his 1972 Munich Olympics design studio, Swiss designer Markus Osterwalder shows off some of his prize Olympic items from his vast archive, and much more. Plus, Rick Poynor’s assessment of this year’s Recontres d’Arles photography festival, and Michael Evamy on the genius of Yusaku Kamekura’s emblem for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.
Please note, CR now has a limited presence on the newsstand at WH Smith high street stores (although it can still be found in WH Smith travel branches at train stations and airports). If you cannot find a copy of CR in your town, your WH Smith store or a local independent newsagent can order it for you. You can search for your nearest stockist here. Alternatively, call us on 020 7970 4878 to buy a copy direct from us. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 970 4878 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.
Yes, they did make the logo bigger. Last August we reported on limited edition Diet Coke packaging from Turner Duckworth featuring an enlarged, cropped version of the logo. Diet Coke is now to adopt the design permanently
The new packaging uses a graphic that is basically a crop of the logo wrapped around the can – full versions are also applied just in case shoppers were unable to identify the brand. Put two of the cans together and the word ‘OK’ is (sort of) spelled out (although some commenters on our original story claimed all they could see was ‘dike’).
Ad Age in the US now reports that Diet Coke is making the design permanent due “to popular demand”. But it also reports that the new design wil only be applied to cans, not bottles.
Turner Duckworth has enjoyed a very succesful relationship with Coca-Cola, steering the drinks giant toward a simpler, bolder approach with clean graphics replacing the clutter of previous designs. Its cropped design was tested in Target shops in August and September 2010 where it was found to have performed well.
RELATED CONTENT
See our post on Coke branding from another era – the making of the Piccadilly Circus neon Coke sign here Check out our post on Turner Duckworth’s Summer 09 Coke cans here
CR for the iPad Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app will also update with new content throughout each month. Try a free sample issue here
CR in Print The August Olympic Special issue of Creative Review contains a series of features that explore the past and present of the Games to mark the opening of London 2012: Adrian Shaughnessy reappraises Wolff Olins’ 2012 logo, Patrick Burgoyne talks to LOCOG’s Greg Nugent about how Wolff Olins’ original brand identity has been transformed into one consistent look for 2012, Eliza Williams investigates the role of sponsorship by global brands of the Games, Mark Sinclair asks Ian McLaren what it was like working with Otl Aicher as a member of his 1972 Munich Olympics design studio, Swiss designer Markus Osterwalder shows off some of his prize Olympic items from his vast archive, and much more. Plus, Rick Poynor’s assessment of this year’s Recontres d’Arles photography festival, and Michael Evamy on the genius of Yusaku Kamekura’s emblem for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.
Please note, CR now has a limited presence on the newsstand at WH Smith high street stores (although it can still be found in WH Smith travel branches at train stations and airports). If you cannot find a copy of CR in your town, your WH Smith store or a local independent newsagent can order it for you. You can search for your nearest stockist here. Alternatively, call us on 020 7970 4878 to buy a copy direct from us. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 970 4878 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.
Well, it’s over. The athletes have had their medals, but what about the creative industries’ contribution? Time to look back over the design and advertising highlights of the London 2012 Olympics
In the new spirit of post-2012 positivity (how long will that last, I wonder) I’m going to restrict this 2012 round-up to the success stories of 2012. So, who in the creative world had a good games?
Thomas Heatherwick From the moment it was lit to its last flicker, Heatherwick Studio’s cauldron was an absolute star of the Games. Conceptually brilliant and utterly beautiful it was one of the most succesful examples of an ambition among the Games’ organisers to reinvent the familiar elements of the Olympics – from the logo to the opening ceremony to the approach to venues. It hasn’t attracted much comment as yet but one of the best things about London 2012 was this desire to question the way in which these things have been done in the past and try to take a new approach to them. It didn’t always work but the Cauldron (of which more here) was a triumph. And, like all the best parties, the guests get to take a bit home with them.
Barber Osgerby Recognisably part of the 2012 look but with a beauty all its own, the 2012 Torch was an undoubted success. It was criticised in some quarters for not having an obvious cultural or historic reference to London or the UK in the way that the torches for Beijing and Athens did but this was very much in line with LOCOG’s overall determination to avoid cliché.
Danny Boyle Bonkers and brilliant, the Opening Ceremony was far better than anybody expected. Just how hard it is to make something like this truly engaging and original was, unfortunately, illustrated by the Closing Ceremony.
Crystal CG and Tait Technologies One of the highlights of Danny Boyle’s spectacular was the animated graphics created by LOCOG and Crystal CG. Which leads us to another great 2012 innovation – the use of 70,500 LED Pixel Tablets designed by Tait Technologies. Each one featured nine pixels arranged in a square. Over 70 minutes of animation was created to run on the system by Crystal CG for the Opening Ceremony, with more for the Closing Ceremony plus the two Paralympics ceremonies. Crystal was briefed by Danny Boyle to try to bring the audience in the stadium into the show, which it did spectacularly.
The organisers’ approach of treating each session of the Games as some kind of TV light entertainment show wasn’t to all tastes but we were particularly struck by the use of the big screens. We posted here about the various elements employed, from the informational to the inspirational (again by Crystal CG and LOCOG’s in-house team) but probably the best piece we saw was the Tron-inspired, Chemical Brothers soundtracked animation that introduced the action in the Velodrome (above).
Sarah Price and the planting team Yes, the venues in the Olympic Park were spectacular and innovative (particularly the temporary elements) but while they have been extensively praised elsewhere we want to put in a word for the planting. As with many new-build sites, the Olympic Park could have been a bit bleak. All those hard edges were smoothed considerably by the beautiful and imaginative planting all around the site. We’re not exactly expert gardeners here at CR but there’s a good interview with the principal designer on the project, Sarah Price, on the Telegraph site here).
Bob Ellis Created by Bob Ellis Equestrian Services, the showjumping fences in Greenwich were an unexpected pleasure, typical of 2012’s innovative approach. We had a London bus, Tower Bridge (sketch shown above, see all of them here), an Abbey Road tribute, Charles Darwin, the Penny Black and even (in a brilliantly Spinal Tap moment) a mini Stonehenge.
Sid Lee Our current issue has a great (though we do say it ourselves) piece by Eliza on whether or not sponsoring the Olympics is a huge waste of time and money for brands. Adidas evidentally thinks it’s worthwhile as it is one of the official partners. In the past, its campaigns, not just for the Olympics but also for the World Cup for which it is also an official sponsor, have not always been up to the mark creatively but Sid Lee’s Take The Stage work was refreshingly different (see our original post here). We particularly liked the clean photographic approach to press and poster, its illustrated Metro wraps (produced with Church of London) and its joyous Team GB sign off. However…
Nike Nike seems to have done it again with most people apparently believing that it and not Adidas was an Olympic sponsor, something that Nike has managed to pull off at most big international sporting events in recent memory. A major help was the Volt line of shoes whose fluorescent yellow form stood out in every event. What also helped was the curious habit of so many Nike-sponsored athletes of taking off said shoes as soon as their event was over and the cameras were on them, and draping the shoes over their shoulders in a highly visible manner. Coincidence? Or maybe the shoes were just really uncomfortable and they couldn’t wait to take them off?
BMW While other brands were firmly excluded from the venues, BMW managed cunningly to infiltrate the stadium via its remote controlled Minis, used to retrieve the javelins, discuses and hammers hurled therein and via the vehicles used in the Closing Ceremony (Rolls Royce being owned by the BMW group now). By the way, there’s a nice Guardian interview with a young volunteer who had one of the plum jobs of the Games – driving one of the remote controlled Minis, here.
Team GB branding While sales of official 2012 merchandise have reportedly disappointed, items featuring the Team GB logo (created by Antidote) seem to have been much more popular. Certainly when visiting the Olympic Park last week, the Team GB logo was far more evident on clothing and bags than the 2012 one. Of course, some of this will be due to Brits wanting to support their team, but it may also be due to the relative aesthetic appeal of the two logos.
Channel 4 While all the focus has been on the Olympics, Channel 4 has reminded us that the Paralympics are still to come with a wonderful piece of filmmaking by director Tom Tagholm (see our post here) and a cheeky press and poster campaign.
The ‘Look’team The logo is still unloved by many, but the way the 2012 look was created and applied across the Olympic Park, London and all over the UK, with the cooperation of local authorities, the GLA, TFL, sponsors etc, was unprecedented (for much more detail on this, see our post here and exclusive interview with LOCOG’s marketing chief Greg Nugent here). We were promised a brand and not just a logo, a comprehensive visual experience to an extent not seen in previous Games. Futurebrand and LOCOG (building on Wolff Olins’ original work and using Gareth Hague’s typeface) along with architectural partners Surface Architects, delivered just that. Now they have to do it all over again for the Paralympics.
Wolff Olins I was in the US for the first half of the Olympics. Watching their TV coverage and reading the local papers, what came through was a sense of London and the UK as a place of innovation, humour, self-deprecation and an endearing kind of wackiness. There was much talk of how Britons had softened their ‘stiff upper lip’ and how open and friendly everyone was. These are ‘brand values’ to die for. Wolff Olins has to take a lot of credit here. In our current issue, in Adrian Shaughnessy’s piece, WO’s Brian Boylan and ex-creative director Patrick Cox talk for the first time about what they originally presented to LOCOG for 2012 and their ambitions for the brand. London was not going to follow the clichéd Olympics model: the desire to treat all aspects of the Games as never before springs from this initial work. So we have Wolff Olins to thank, at least in part, for some of the best things about the Games – the Opening Ceremony, for the venues, for the volunteers, even down to one of the last acts of 2012, turning a Heathrow car park into a special terminal for departing athletes. The impetus for all this came from the brand that Wolff Olins created for 2012. Too much emphasis has been placed on the aesthetic appeal (or lack thereof) of the logo (incidentally our current issue has a fascinating image from the sketchbook of designer Luke Gifford showing the logo’s development, which has never been published before). As I wrote in my intro to this month’s issue, I still can’t bring myself to love it and I do think that the goals of 2012 could have been achieved with something more appealing, but I absolutely admire the thinking behind what WO did for 2012. They set in motion, from the very beginning, a principle that London would reinvent what it means to host an Olympic Games. That principle succeeded brilliantly.
There were lots of other things to admire at London 2012 – the venue architecture, the art in the Olympic Park (the Orbit excepted), the Swiss team’s rather nice use of Helvetica. Let us know your personal favourites below.
CR for the iPad Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app will also update with new content throughout each month. Try a free sample issue here
CR in Print The August Olympic Special issue of Creative Review contains a series of features that explore the past and present of the Games to mark the opening of London 2012: Adrian Shaughnessy reappraises Wolff Olins’ 2012 logo, Patrick Burgoyne talks to LOCOG’s Greg Nugent about how Wolff Olins’ original brand identity has been transformed into one consistent look for 2012, Eliza Williams investigates the role of sponsorship by global brands of the Games, Mark Sinclair asks Ian McLaren what it was like working with Otl Aicher as a member of his 1972 Munich Olympics design studio, Swiss designer Markus Osterwalder shows off some of his prize Olympic items from his vast archive, and much more. Plus, Rick Poynor’s assessment of this year’s Recontres d’Arles photography festival, and Michael Evamy on the genius of Yusaku Kamekura’s emblem for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.
Please note, CR now has a limited presence on the newsstand at WH Smith high street stores (although it can still be found in WH Smith travel branches at train stations and airports). If you cannot find a copy of CR in your town, your WH Smith store or a local independent newsagent can order it for you. You can search for your nearest stockist here. Alternatively, call us on 020 7970 4878 to buy a copy direct from us. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 970 4878 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
The original 1987 logo
Throwback to 1982
