ICM - Leeds Design Agency

There has been a lot of debate in the office about the London 2012 olympic logo designed by Wolff Ollins, who likes it, who doesn’t, is it now, is it street (only time I will ever use this term I promise). Personally at first I must admit I hated it, now though it’s grown on me and seems to be getting a lot more younger people interested in the olympics.

So following on from the logo one of the most eagerly-awaited design elements of the London 2012 Olympics was definitely the pictograms, everybody remembers Otl Aicher’s set for Munich in 1972

These set the standard for years to come, and are what all new pictograms get compared to.
SomeOne a London design practice was given the task of creating the new set, looking at the criticism the logo got it was an unenviable task.

The concept for the pictograms and one of the outcomes of this was to create two style versions – a silhouette version used for high visibility and information-based applications, and a dynamic version used both as decoration and where a more exciting version is called for, such as on posters or banners.

Again at first I wasn’t sure about the silhouette version, I’m sure this will grow on me. I really like the dynamic version though which apparently was inspired by the London Underground map and can see potential when animated or, for example, rendered in 3D.

Below are some additional images from the SomeOne site showing the ‘dynamic’ set in use

Could the pictograms and these rival the Munich Games versions?