ISO50

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!

The top image is a General Dynamics postcard by Erik Nitsche. The lower is from Joel Johnson’s flickr page. The background illustrations in each appear to be essentially identical save for some rotation.  If you look closely at the children in the lower one you can see they are superimposed rather poorly (note the black outline from the sloppy clipping path).  I wonder if this was someone appropriating the artwork or if this was some General Dynamics-sanctioned variation of the original (doubt it).  Interesting either way; I think I like the yellowed, saturated version on the bottom best. The composition of the top example, of course, is superb.