If you've been hanging around this blog for a while, you won't be in any doubt about my views on the 2012 Olympics 'brand mark'. Some of you may be inclined to think that this is merely designers' bitchiness, but the rule that I apply to my judgement is governed by the words of Jeff Bezos: that "a brand is what somebody says about you when you're not in the room".
Image half inched from crackunit.
I bring this up again now because there is a very interesting article by Adrian Shaughnessy over on the Creative Review blog. And the most telling words in the article are, to my mind, these: "The dismally designed literature (not done by Wolff Olins) that is currently being pushed through letterboxes in East London shows what happens when communication is freed from its moorings; it slips into muddle and cliché. Similarly, Wolff Olins’ logo for NYC & Company, the New York tourism body, met with a hostile response when applied clumsily to its iconic taxis by the client recently."
So, when it comes to the 'brand experience' (surely the whole raison d'être of the Wolff Olins pitch) it seems that what's being served up are curate's eggs. Whether that's entirely due to Wolff Olins is, of course, debatable. They may well be cooking and serving the excellent parts, but the poor curates amongst us still end up with something that can be pretty hard to stomach.
This is so indicative of so much bad design I see around me. More than the final product, I’d love to see the whole creative process that went into something like this. Is this the result of designing by committee? Or, as I suspect, were there people involved who were simply too clever for their own good? Did intelligence ride roughshod over basic aesthetic instincts? I really want to know how something so bad could cost such a fortune. I want to know so I can join their ranks. With no design training and only a few Photoshop skills, I know I can do better. And perhaps I could make myself the same fortune.
Posted by: Richard Madeley | 29 January 2008 at 02:08 AM