ICM - Leeds Design Agency

I’ll be the first to admit I’m not a big reader. I’ll read a magazine or a newspaper from cover to cover, but give me a book and I just can’t stick with it.

Few authors have made me pick up their book with enthusiasm to keep turning the pages, let alone get to the end and go back to the beginning to read it again. One of those authors is Douglas Adams.

Maybe it is because I had watched the BBC Television series of ‘Hitchhikers’ before reading the book that gave me the interest, maybe it was the enticing book cover?

Maybe it was knowing the idea for the title The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy occurred to him while he lay drunk in a field, that raised my interest in reading his words.

Towel Day has become an annual celebration on the 25th of May, as a tribute to the late author, on that day, fans around the universe proudly carry a towel in his honour.

Here’s a little clip of Towel Day:

Who is in charge of design as a whole for the London Olympics? It might just be me, but I think they’ve taken leave of thier senses. I just don’t understand some of the decisions that have been made. Having just got over the initial shock of the 2012 logo which I have to admit I wasn’t too keen on at first, along come Wenlock, Mandeville and the Orbit.

Lets start with Wenlock and Mandeville the mascots for 2012 Olympics – creatures supposedly fashioned from droplets of steel used to build the stadium. With a metallic finish, a single large eye made out of a camera lens, a London taxi light on their heads and the Olympic rings represented as friendship bracelets on their wrists they resemble… well nothing.

The names I can put up with as they have meaning. Wenlock, named after the Shropshire town of Much Wenlock that helped inspire Pierre de Coubertin to launch the modern Olympics, and Mandeville, inspired by the Buckinghamshire town of Stoke Mandeville, where the Paralympics were founded. Lord Coe, said the mascots were aimed squarely at children and designed with the digital age in mind. So ok, maybe I shouldn’t get too annoyed as they are not even aimed at people over four foot.

It just seems nowadays we can’t have anything “normal”. The official mascot for the World Cup in 66 for example was a lion called World Cup Willy, a straight forward no nonsense lion who wore a Union Flag shirt of red, white and blue. Maybe it’s just me getting old.

Then we come to the Orbit designed by Anish Kapoor...

Read the rest...

We’ve already said enough on here about our views of the 2012 Olympic logo, so now it is time to take a look at the recently introduced Olympic mascots – a subject we’ve touched on before here

I suppose we have to be thankful that we haven’t ended up with a Lion or a Beefeater or a telephone box or some other nausiating cliché, instead we are introduced to Wenlock and Mandeville:

Forged from the last drops of steel that made the girders that made the stadium, the full story of how Wenlock and Mandeville were created can be seen here.

Come back and tell us what you think after clicking the link.

Like the logo, I feel the mascots will take some warming-to. There must have been a massive temptation to ‘play-it-safe’ after the public backlash at the logo. Maybe I’m too old, too cynical? Maybe they will inspire a younger generation?

Let’s just hope that come 2012, they are as cool as Berlino the Bear!