Capturing the True Spirit of the Games: Olympic Identities That Don’t

Remember the incredible fuss over the logo for the 2012 London Olympics when it was first released in 2007?

The image consulting firm, Wolff Olins was identified as the culprit, as details came to surface about a process that required 400,000 British pounds and a year to create. Public petitions were signed to recreate the logo, Mayor Ken Livingstone refused to support the pink and orange colors, and some groups likened the jigsaw-puzzle shape to a swastika. One of the major newspapers in the U.K., The Daily Mail, even announced an open competition and invited anyone to participate in redesigning the logo. NBS Sports reported that an animated display of London’s 2012 Olympics logo was removed from an official website following concern it could trigger epileptic seizures.

Cut to 2010 and the week of the opening ceremonies in Vancouver. There’s a growing tide of opinion that the symbol for these games, based in British Columbia, is not an accurate reflection of their culture. Rather, they maintain, this logo is based on the native tribe of the Inuit who live in the Canadian arctic.

The logo and mascot of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics is inspired by the Canadian Inuit inukshuk. The inukshuk is a stone marker that was used by the Inuit to guide them through the northern Arctic terrain. The Inuit have inhabited northern Canada from Alaska to northern Russia for centuries.

But according to novelist Douglas Coupland in the February 7th New York Times Magazine, “If you want to use the First Nations motifs for your iconography, use the ones that actually are from here.”

The Vancouver logo, called Ilanaaq (el la nawk) was the result of a design competition, selected from 1,600 entries, and was considered by an international panel of nine judges. The selected logo was created by Vancouver-based graphic designers Elena Rivera MacGregor and Gonzalo Alatorre, who used an inukshuk in Vancouver's Stanley Park as their inspiration.

“There were only so many things that could represent the entire country,” said Rivera MacGregor. “We researched it and we concluded the inukshuk was in fact one character that could pretty much tell the whole story. Rivera MacGregor claims that her winning design represents the culture, environment and people of Canada.

A prominent Canadian designer and writer, Marian Bantjes, wrote in her blog about the use of the inukshuk as a foundation for the Vancouver Olympic Games logo. “My first reaction? Gee, I didn’t know the Games were taking place in Nunavut. Where’s Nunavut? It’s up north, where there’s lots of snow and not a whole lot of landmarks.”

http://www.underconsideration.com/speakup/archives/002312.html

The organizing committee, VANOC, has worked to rationalize the symbol as a perfect representation of the Vancouver games. “Ilanaaq above all is a team player,” said John Furlong, chief executive officer of the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. “As VANOC relies on partnerships and a shared vision to deliver the Games, so does our emblem. Each stone relies on the other to support the whole. Together, the result is a symbol of strength, vision and teamwork that points us all in the direction of excellence and it will welcome the world to Canada in 2010.”

I’ve been on teams charged with creating image-defining visuals and identity systems for high profile organizations and events. At this level of global awareness, it’s virtually impossible to meet everyone’s expectations. It’s also clear that the concern over making an icon or logo that is culturally appropriate tends to encourage a process-by-committee attitude. For the development of the brand identity of any Olympic games, we can only imagine the number of cooks working and adding their opinions in the kitchen. There seems a direct correlation between the level of exposure or prestige, and the number of contributing voices. It can quickly become a challenge just to sort and consider all ideas and opinions.

The other observation is a bit of an inside joke among designers who work in brand consulting firms. That is, there is a tendency among those companies to “back into” a design that resonates on an instinctive level. The creative brief — or the purpose statement that guides and informs the creative process — is often articulated after the design has been intuitively or instinctively developed by the creative team. More than once, I've watched a smart account exec write a beautifully-worded rationale that is custom-tailored to suit the logo that is to be presented and proposed to the client. Problem was, it was after the logo had already been created. I’ve even seen the back-end qualitative research repackaged in order to validate the design that everyone likes.

In this case, the designers saw a statue in a local park and drew inspiration from that. I have no doubt that they researched it enough to understand the significance of the symbolism (separate parts that are internally supportive of each other, therefore allowing the structure to exist), and latched onto that as a tenet of any Olympic games. They saw the opportunity to adapt a simple image and to assign symbolic colors to each of the five parts, which would validate the icon even further.

The fact that it didn’t exactly fit the local relevance requirement of the exercise was probably conveniently overlooked. After all, the Inuit are at least one important component of Canada’s identity. Like all creative endeavors it was designed as a matter of instinct, an inspiration, a process that is not empirical, logically created or perfect.

Think of it as an intuit of the Inuit. Below are logos from the 2006 and 2008 Winter Olympic games.

A Flash From the Past?

It might have captured the imagination of the masses and throngs of technophiles, but the iPad lacks one very critical piece of software for most of the viewing audience: Flash.

According to Nick Bilton in The New York Times, it wasn’t lost on the world of web designers and programmers that Apple’s new “fab-Pad” lacked the one piece of software that allows animation in media and advertising on the majority of the world’s mobile devices, laptops and desktop computers. There’s apparently a bit of a standoff developing between Adobe — maker of Flash software which is used to encode videos and animation for advertising and websites — and Apple.

Apple is part owner of the patents for a new technology, HTML5. Unlike Flash, a downloaded software, HTML5 works directly in a web browser. Apple has argued that Flash is too slow, consumes battery life too quickly and is vulnerable to viruses. Similarly, the iPhone cannot view much of the animated web due to the lack of Flash viewing capability.

There would be no concerns, of course, if not for the fact that most of what we watch on the internet is a moving picture. And while we’re a long way from seeing the wild, wild west of the “world wide web” in a veritable showdown, the two companies are certainly poised for a future standoff that would make any fan of western movies proud.

It will be interesting to see what the early adopters think of HTML5, and to track the consumer willingness (and willingness of the professional web developers) to relinquish Flash as a means to see animation.

The New York Times:
IPad Can’t Play Flash Video, but It May Not Matter

The New A4 Chip
Ashlee Vance and Brad Stone report that there’s more to the changes in Apple’s new iPad than just touchscreen technology. Offering some hint of the company’s future strategy, Apple has passed on the traditional, outsourced model for primary chips in its new computer and used its own chip, the Apple “A4.”

The move was positioned as a way to improve the speed of the new device, as well as preserve battery power longer than other chips from specialized microprocessor companies. Steve Jobs called the A4 the most advanced chip that Apple had ever used, and touted its speed, reliability and 10 hour battery life.

Clearly, Apple is not content to simply pioneer new hardware or innovate to create new classes of electronic devices. It seems to want control over the silicon processing and even the content as well.

The New York Times:
A Little Chip Designed by Apple Itself

Not Your Father’s American Red Cross

If you would like to help the victims in Haiti, text “HAITI” to 90999 on your mobile phone. 100 percent of your $10 donation will support the relief efforts by the American Red Cross in Haiti.

American Red Cross: Text “HAITI” to 90999 FAQ

Congratulations to one of this country’s oldest nonprofits, one of the most recognizable brands in the world and also, one of the most controversial disaster relief organizations. The American Red Cross, working in collaboration with the State Department, mGive Foundation, and Mobile Accord, made the decision to launch a mobile campaign and run commercials during the nationally televised divisional playoffs last weekend.

Sitting there watching the game, I took one look at the “Mobile Giving Campaign” and knew right away this would be a huge success. My daughter would later share with me that she had called to contribute.

According to The New York Times January 19th edition, the campaign spots that were aired by the National Football League during the weekend generated as much as $500,000 per hour. As of Sunday, about $103 million in relief donations had been raised, $22 million of which resulted from the mobile campaign, as reported in the article.

According to the Red Cross, it’s the most successful mobile fund-raising campaign in their history. All of this might be common sense to some degree, as we realize the power and convenience of mobile technology. Just over four years ago, only $250,000 was raised through mobile communications for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

It helps that the First Lady made a public endorsement of the American Red Cross on television (and later on YouTube) and along with the President, visited the headquarters of the organization in Washington, D.C. Other celebrities also campaigned and the timing appeared to be a significant factor. But it was apparently the work of the State Department that expedited the mobile giving campaign in the hours after the earthquake, leapfrogging ahead of the standard process for setting up a mobile text-based fundraiser. In some instances, carriers donated services and agreed not to wait until collecting to advance the donations to the American Red Cross.

If you would like to help, please text “HAITI” to 90999 on your mobile device. For more information, see the FAQ link on the website of the American Red Cross, posted above. Your $10 donation will provide tarps, blankets and hygiene kits to the homeless in Haiti, and also facilitates a number of other post-earthquake relief operations.

We should all appreciate the pain and grief that the people of Haiti have suffered, and it's clearly a time to lend support through the right channels that will apply the assistance in the most effective way. It is also a time to be proud of our country for its generosity and desire to help.

The New York Times:
A Deluge of Donations via Text Messages