Interesting Cretive Review piece about Olympic Logos: "With the enormous barrel of nastines currently being dumped all over the London 2012 logo, we wondered what the reception might have been for some of its predecessors had they been released today. What comments, for example, might the Herr in the strasse have come out with when confronted with design’s holiest of holies, the Munich 1972 logo?" Read the rest of this article >
If you read down to the bottom you’ll find this surprising bit of info: "As we revealed here, the final 72 logo is not solely Otl Aicher’s design. Aicher had wanted to use a radiating sun (which was later put to good use by the German lottery) but it was deemed impossible to copyright. His design was put out to competition, the winning entry, as judged by a panel including Aicher, being Coordt von Mannstein’s (literal) twist on the original."
And on a side note the type is set in Univers, so nice. Image via FFFFOUND!
Another page from Design Magazine #237. The balloons feature the original illustration for the ’68 games by Ramirez Vazquez, Eduardo Terrazas (MEX) and Lance Wyman (USA) who designed the “Mexico 68” logo. Wonder if any survived?
Another image by German Designer Otl Aicher who was responsible for the branding of the ’72 Munich Games. All of this stuff is amazing. I am not a huge fan of the Dachsund mascot, but this is about as good a treatment you could give to such a concept. Simply do a Flickr Search for "Otl Aicher" and your head will explode. Incredible stuff, some really nice shots of the London Aicher exhibition. I just can’t get over how contemporary these colors and forms are. None of it feels dated, could have been from a pitch for 2012, if the people who oversee those sorts of things still had any taste that is. Seems like all the stuff now days is targeted at the lowest common denominator. All of the recent stuff I have seen for 2012 is throw-away, middle of the road with compromise written all over it. Aicher’s campaign is thought provoking and timeless, obviously a good argument against the design by committee ethics I have to imagine produced this sort of output.
One of the original posters from the 64 Tokyo olympics. Simple and effective, the gold/red color scheme is perfect. Love the grain of the photo, yet another beautifully organic phenomena we have lost to the digital revolution.
Design magazine Issue 239. Very nice color combo, similar to the Mexico Olympics cover. The cover story reads “Perspex and the transparent look”. Perspex is a transparent glass alternative heavily used in 1970’s interior design. They utilized fluorescent colored Perspex for all sorts of furniture and installations. My neighbor had a lot in his old SF Victorian until they remodeled. Should have snagged a picture before they tore it out. The colors featured in the illustration on the cover of this magazine must have been the common choices, as I recall his were all in these tones as well.
It’s hard to comment on something so perfect. First we have the header for Design Magazine itself. The type is beautiful, they’ve even managed to gracefully compress the ‘g’ so it doesn’t throw off the grid too much. And then of course we have one of the greatest logo designs of all time right beneath it incorporating an amazing color scheme. It’s all there. The logo for the ’68 Mexico Olymipics was created by American designer Lance Wyman (click the above image for a full size version). The posters for the games were a collaborative effort, an example and some info are here.
Had this laying around for a while, classic Olympic poster. This is a perfect example of how much the core ethics of design have changed. Take this one in, then have a look at these olympic logos…. what happened to design?
