{"id":559,"date":"2007-06-07T00:20:19","date_gmt":"2007-06-07T00:20:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=559"},"modified":"2007-06-07T00:20:19","modified_gmt":"2007-06-07T00:20:19","slug":"olympic-seizure-heroes-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=559","title":{"rendered":"Olympic Seizure Heroes 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

When our national museum, Te Papa, unveiled its logo to be a big ol’ fingerprint, there was a roar of condemnation and approbrium. Countless wits offered up the sentiment that they would be quite happy to be paid an awful lot of money to put a thumbprint on a piece of card. Kiwis thought the logo was a joke and a rip-off.
\nWrong. The fingerprint is a great logo. I stood up for it then and I stand up for it now. Logo designers get a lot of abuse they don’t deserve. My personal involvement with design, spectating from an administration role at the Massey University design school, impressed upon me just how tricky it was to get things right.
\nAll of the above is just to establish my credentials so that when I say the London Olympics 2012 logo is a design trainwreck of the highest order, you don’t think I’m bashing it just for the fun of it. No, I really mean it. This is a disaster that graphic designers will drink to for decades to come.
\nI first heard about it here<\/a>, just yesterday, as James Wallis expounded on its crapness. And, y’know, he’s right, as he so often is. Take a look:
\n
\nThese jagged pink chunks represent the numbers 2012 and… and something. Just take a second to read the shape. It’s rocky and riddled with fissures. It looks like something that has been smashed. There’s no guide for the eye giving you a sensible way to look at it. The sharp turns are not welcoming. The negative space is nearly crowded out of existence, providing no relief. The colours are loud and aggressive. Quite frankly, it looks altogether too pleased with itself.
\nSo far, so rubbish. Then the esteemed Mr Wallis linked across to here<\/a>, where you could watch the video introducing the logo. Motivated by the fact that James professes to have a mate in there playing wheelchair basketball, I clicked on that link and…
\n…and shook my head in astonishment. Because there was a warning beside the video:
\n
\n(Image rescued from google’s cache<\/a>.)
\nThat’s right. The introductory promotional video for the logo for London’s Olympic games had a seizure warning attached to it<\/em>.
\nNow, sometimes you get crappy design outcomes. You get bad briefs, poor ideas, foolish choices, stupid development, and you end up with a graphic design turd. But this – this just beggars belief. It passed across everyone’s desk and no-one ever thought, well, hang on, perhaps we don’t<\/em> want a promotional video that will send epileptics into fits. Perhaps that would be a bad look.
\nI watched the video and I<\/em> almost had a seizure. Gigantic primary-coloured graphics flashed across the screen. It was rubbish. It was so rubbish it actually was bad for your health<\/em>.
\nAnyway, if you didn’t see it yesterday, you missed your chance. It’s gone now.<\/a> The BBC has the story:
\nEpilepsy fears over 2012 footage<\/a><\/p>\n

A segment of animated footage promoting the 2012 Olympics has been removed from the organisers’ website after fears it could trigger epileptic seizures. Prof Graham Harding, who developed the test used to measure photo-sensitivity levels in TV material, said it should not be broadcast again. Charity Epilepsy Action said it had received calls from people who had suffered fits after seeing it…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And that, my friends, is how its done at the very highest level. An inspiration to us all.
\n—
\nRubbish as that was – and I suspect the logo will be redesigned or abandoned entirely before the year is out – I actually have sympathy for the other marketing angle for the games. The 2012 games committee are pushing it as “everybody’s games”, and trying to use it as a motivational tool for people to get out and take some risks or make some changes in their own lives. That’s a laudable goal, and I approve. You can see more of that take on things in the movie that replaced the Olympic Seizure Heroes one<\/a>.
\n—
\nJust heard from Jenni<\/a> that our 48-hour film was mentioned twice at the finals – we came runner-up in ‘Best Makeup’ and in the top three for ‘Best Script’. That’s incredibly cool! Yay team!
\n—
\nAnd another reason why the internet entertains me – I can spread the good word about the previously-mentioned Judd Apatow interview<\/a> to someone who hadn’t heard about it despite being a cast member in Freaks & Geeks<\/a>. Heh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When our national museum, Te Papa, unveiled its logo to be a big ol’ fingerprint, there was a roar of condemnation and approbrium. Countless wits offered up the sentiment that they would be quite happy to be paid an awful lot of money to put a thumbprint on a piece of card. Kiwis thought the … Continue reading Olympic Seizure Heroes 2012<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8D9ZE-91","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}