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NYC's Olympic Logo
By
Jen Chung
Published Apr 6, 2004
Modified Mar 6, 2008
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By
Jen Chung
Published Apr 6, 2004
Modified Mar 6, 2008
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The new logo for NYC's Olympics bid was unveiled yesterday and, while Gothamist is no design expert, let's just say that it sucks. The informal straw poll quotes:
"That's a bit gay...isn't it?"
"That's pretty lame. Looks like a cross dresser Olympics. It'd be a good logo for the upcoming Wigstock, though."
"Is it for the Special Olympics? And the Special Olympics logo is actually pretty good!"
We get that it's the Statue of Liberty and an athlete raising his/her arms in victory. But the main problem, besides being boring, is that it's such a static image. The Sydney Olympics logo gave some impression of movement and energy, and in the animated film of the NYC bid logo, there are images of athletes in motion. Also, while winning is clearly what Olympic athletes want, Gothamist always thought that a big part of it was participating, and therefore the logo seems exclusionary. We were surprised by this final choice for the logo, because there was some cool stuff up during site selection and also because there's more energy in a walk sign. The work was done by Ogilvy & Mather (who has a great logo), who donated the logo, hopefully because the NYC 2012 bid committee refused to pay for it. Gothamist Idea 4967: Get into the business of designing bad logos and charging big bucks.
Let's hope that if NYC gets the Olympics bid, we won't have a crappy mascot like Izzy from Atlanta. Gothamist nominates either a tiger (a salute to illegal apartment pets) or an alligator (salute to urban legend). Or maybe Homer's spring should be revisited...
Updated: Look at past and present Olympic mascots. Gothamist was going to say the crappiest ones were from the U.S., until we saw the Greek ones. The U.S. ones still take the cake, but the Greek "brother and sister" (with huge huge feet) made us think twice.
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Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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