As I saw the London 2012 logo in my email inbox recently, I thought I would write a bit about how the logo still strikes me as wrong now as it was in 2007.

But then I was checking about the news in the New York Times iPhone app when I came across an article by Alice Rawsthorn about the logo. She seemed to cover much of what I felt so I have decided to leave you with her words. Read Alice’s article:

Despite Changes, There’s Little to Love in 2012 Olympics Logo

As I announced on lbdesign’s website last month, I have now returned to the USA. After spending seven very happy years in the UK, it was the right time to move back to America. I’ve landed in Pennsylvania, a very historic corner of the world. It’s a lovely area, with plenty of trees, hills and rivers. Settling just outside of Philadelphia, life is slowing down a bit as I getting unpacked and settled in.

Of course, part of my efforts with lbdesign will be to build our client base here in the US. We’ve already started working with The Whiting Law Group and Solstice Communications.

As a web designer, I am interested in meeting other designers and developers who live and work in the Philly area. I invite visitors to the site to get in touch.

2232 Elmwood Avenue, Wilmette, Illinois 60091

Before I list my preferred suppliers, let me offer two links where readers can familiarise themselves with the different types of printing I reference in this post:

Litho Printing
Digital Printing
(Note: I figure that oversize printing is pretty self-explanatory, hence no link for that.)

So, where to turn for your printing needs?  Let me make a few recommendations:

Litho Printing:
For all of my litho printing, I use Saints & Co., in Liverpool. Their professionalism, quality of print, reliability, technical skill and knowledge and customer care are miles ahead of their competitors. Their pricing is competitive. I’ve been sending artwork to Saints for more than 5 years running, and I can honestly say that they have never let me down.

Saints & Co can be reached on 0151 475 4100. Tell them I sent you.

Digital Printing:
I’ve two recommendations for digi print jobs. The first is my regular, London-based supplier, Hobs Reprographics. In particular, their Eagle Street office is outstanding. They know their machines and get the best out of them. Their professionalism and reliability have made me look good to my clients time after time. Their pricing is competitive for London. (I have to admit that some of their other branches have not lived up to the Eagle Street standards.)

My second recommendation is 1st Byte, also in London. Although on the pricier side, 1st Byte have unsurpassed technical skill and top-rate machines. They are true artisans. They can handle all sorts of digi runs, but I tend to use them on short-run, high-end projects.

Oversize Printing:
I stumbled upon LTD Limited shortly after I arrived in the UK. Based in East London, LTD Limited say ‘if you can design it, we can produce it’ and I have to agree. They do the most amazing print work on all sorts of materials and objects. In fact, on one job for me, not only did they print the posters for window displays, they almost crafted the mounts for the displays! Quality of print, attention to detail and customer care are these guys calling cards. Every time I need them, they always impress me.

It’s really simple:

1. Open InDesign, but make sure that no documents are open.
2. Turn on the Character palette. This can be done by navigating to Type > Character via the menu bar, or by the keyboard shortcut (on a PC) of Ctrl+T.
3. 
   In the Character tab, select the down arrow next to the Language and then select your language of choice.

When you then create a new document, the default language for text boxes will be whatever you previously selected.

When opening existing documents which still have US English as the default language for text-boxes, simply open the document and repeat steps 2 and 3, making sure that no content is selected while you alter the Language settings.

So I took a little field trip into central Oxford. (Everyone loves field trips!) My first stop was Blackwell on Broad Street. Nope, I was told, the main book store doesn’t have any books on graphic design. I needed to cross the street to the Blackwell Art + Poster Shop. Once inside, I worked my way to the back corner of the basement level where the design books are shelved.

After flipping through about 10-15 books, I decided logolounge3 (by Bill Gardner and Catharine Fishel; published by Rockport Publishers), which is a collection logos and logotypes for all sorts of companies, from all kinds of design agencies. I was very impressed with the wide range of logos (2,000 in total) and the manner in which the book was organised: by logo type (typography, enclosures, food, head, and display type are just some examples). It wasn’t cheap at £32.50 for hardback, but it wasn’t too dear either. After flipping through the pages on several occasions throughout the week, I am pleased with the purchase and consider it money well spent.

Liam’s review rating: 7 (out of 10).

Last thought: logolounge.com also offers a membership subscription where members can search through the stock of logos. They claim to have 67,280 logos online.

In addition to the work that they had commissioned from me, the organisers of Arts Fresco were coordinating with the local newspaper to produce a series of promotional posters, banner ads and a wrap to be distributed on the day. As I was the lead creative on the project, I was asked to share my designs and files with the newspaper to ensure visual consistency across all the promotional materials.

To help with this task, I turned to Kuler to create the colour palette for the artwork. Opening the PDF that contained the official festival logo, I grabbed the CMYK percentages from Adobe Illustrator and pasted them into Kuler. Using the sliders and colour wheel in Kuler, I went back and forth (literally!) to get the colour palette just right. Once I was happy with the colour palette, I published it as an Adobe Swatch Exchange file, saving it locally onto my computer.

In designing the website and postcard, I imported the Abode Swatch Exchange (ASE) file into Illustrator (to create some of the graphics for the web) and into InDesign, to create the postcard.

In Illustrator, this is done on the Swatches palette: Open Swatch Library > Other Library … > then navigate to where you have the ASE file stored.

In InDesign, you can import the file on the Swatches palette: Load Swatches … > then navigate to where you had the ASE file saved.

On a related note, since I stored the colour palette online with Kuler, I was able to quickly access the hexadecimal codes for my palette when I was creating the CSS for the website. (Yes, you can also get them from InDesign and Illustrator.)

Once the design of the website and the postcard were approved, I was able to email the Swatch Exchange file to the Market Harborough newspaper, saving them the trouble of manually entering the colour palette values into InDesign and Illustrator. The production team at the newspaper was happy at my time-saving measures – and I was able to relax knowing that the colour palette I had carefully selected would be preserved across the variety of Arts Fresco promotional materials.

Rather than embarrass myself by revealing mistakes from own practice (like getting the postcode wrong on my own company’s stationery), I thought I would use a photo to illustrate the point. The photo – taken on the North Circular last Friday afternoon – also speaks to the importance of checking whether outdoor or vehicle signage is still in good repair.

Do you think Iceland has had many job applicants to be lorry drivers? The pay rate seems a bit low, don’t you think?

But then I continue to see the 2012 logo in all its monstrosity. And I can no longer keep hold of my public tongue. Every time I see that logo, I have the same reaction: what were they thinking? Striking? Yes, but so is a slap in the face. Memorable? Only in that it has caused such an up-roar, as has Guantanamo Bay. (By the way, I am drawing too many comparisons between the 2012 logo and Guantanamo Bay … simply that both have caused an uproar in some corners of the world. This isn’t a political blog.)

The real short-coming of the logo is its failure to account for those not in the ‘youth of tomorrow’ category. The leaders of the Olympic committee have stressed that it was all about inclusion, but if the logo is geared for the London street culture, doesn’t that necessarily mean that a large portion of others are left out?

Making a logo for the Olympics is not an easy task – make no mistake about that. With so many different stakeholders involved in the process and with so much of the public taking a keen interest in the event, it is an impossible task to create a logo that works for everyone. But what the Olympic committee should be doing now – rather than taking a government-esque response of “that’s the logo; now learn to love it” stance – is adopting a forward-thinking business approach to the backlash against the logo and trying to put a positive spin on it. Maybe even admitting they got it wrong, or could have gotten it more right. At very least, the Committee should acknowledge the role of the public (their customers!) in deciding how the corporate side of the Olympics is presented.