It’s a Numbers Game
Note to self: Find someone who can introduce you to the marketing chief at the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and/or start charging more for your logo designs. Everything I read or hear about the upcoming Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, has a dollar sign attached to it. The cost of hosting the Games and local infrastructure projects are coming in at some $50 billion and I just learned that the London 2012 Olympic logo (unveiled in 2007), cost $800,000 to create. In 2007! Clearly I am not charging enough for my work.
I’m not saying that the agency that designed the 2014 logo didn’t earn their money. (In fact they were probably saying daily, “Why did we want this assignment?”).
I love the idea of collaboration but there are limits. It seems the Interbrand Agency that designed the logo had to run their concepts by the Organizing Committee, the host country’s political echelon, and the International Olympic Committee.
When the Sochi logo was unveiled back in December 2009, it was touted as “a grand collaboration fashioned by an expert council made up of high profile marketing specialists, famous athletes, and representatives of large multi-national companies, working both in Russia and abroad.”
(Remind me never to complain again about having to run my logo concepts past the “branding team”).
It really is a wonder that a logo exists at all. The agency that produced it deserves a Gold Medal for keeping those pasted smiles on their faces since 2009.
And now everyone in the world is weighing in with an opinion.
Logo designs are very, very subjective. It’s like walking in a mine field when you start presenting concepts.
Your audience is usually predisposed to certain colors, typeface weights (who knew) and design styles (simple vs. ornate).
And almost always you hear someone say, “That logo/color/mark/type reminds me of “XYZ Company…”
So what makes the Sochi logo distinctive, if in fact it is (I’m sure you already have an opinion).
For starters, it's the first Olympic logo to include a web address and the first to lack drawn elements.
It also features “unassuming” lower case letters.
The mirroring of the words “Sochi” and “2014” in the design is intended to reflect “that Sochi is a meeting point between sea and mountains.”
Throughout the Games, you will also be seeing a “second part” to the logo which is a pattern of blue and white snow crystals that can be used with the official mark (according to strict brand standards).
And of course the logo incorporates the Olympic rings, first designed by a Frenchman, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, in 1912.
The Sochi logo has been described as “a 21st century brand for a digital generation.”
Simple.
Adaptable to both small and large applications.
Works well in all media.
The logo visualization process started with a traditional floral design in the destination letters. The designers were inspired by Russian painted wood ornamentation featuring vivid colors and intricate flower patterns on a black background (think nesting dolls and decorative wood boxes).
Then they started working in native animal life, nautical symbols, and snow-capped mountain references to Sochi’s Black Sea resort landscape. Finally, they included the more obvious Olympic torch in the same colors as the Olympic rings.
Ten revisions later, the Organizing Committee settled on a “more future-oriented logo.”
We’ve come a long way (in every way) from the first Olympic Games held in Greece in 776 BC.
Back then, competitors were free born male Greek citizens, never accused of murder or sacrilege.
And the women spectators sat in their appointed places, dutifully watching the chariot races (but forbidden from checking out the nude contests between men).
One hundred bulls were slaughtered as a sacrifice to Zeus, poems were written and statues carved of the victors. But sadly, no event branding.