Sometimes I get so mad I have to vent it, which, I have to admit, has got me into some deep water from time to time. But this week, the sight of this…
on Design Week’s website started my emotional cauldron bubbling.
Why is it that most cities have such bad track records when visually expressing
major events? With this example, it would seem that the organisers of the
Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games went all weak at the knees at the thought of
‘Turner Prize-shortlisted Scottish artist Jim Lambie’ being involved.
Now, I have nothing against Jim Lambie; his site-specific work is very
dramatic…
but he is an ‘artist’. My understanding of true artists is that they are the
‘client’. By contrast, with the ‘graphic designer’, the client is a necessary
component in the mix. In other words, the client has a design problem and the graphic
designer solves that problem. Simple.
By the by, a weird coincidence that Lambie's gallery piece above looks remarkable similar to this...
Mexico 1968 logo
So why did the organisers approach Lambie to take on this commission? Presumably
thinking that this…
Would successfully translate into this…
The result is the most awful, cringe-making result, looking like it came out of
a bad HND computer course.
If that weren’t bad enough, Lambie’s work had to be integrated into the equally
uninspiring logo created by Marque…
which, according to Design Week’s report, ‘is intended to communicate the
concepts of time, data and measurement.’
The Commonwealth Games Federation Chief Executive Mike Hooper describes the logo as ‘original and refreshing, with a great degree of flexibility’.
And Marque’s Managing Director Mark Noë says: ‘We hope that the identity will
become an iconic symbol celebrating a very special moment in time.’ Really?
We saw the same thing happening when LOGOG unveiled its posters for the 2012
Olympics at Tate Modern, ironically (unconsciously, I assume) on easels…
Tracey Emin clutching here contribution (also below).
Once again, these were the work of ‘artists’, with not a graphic designer in
sight. What we were left with was embarrassingly inept typography and
meaningless imagery under the sacred tabernacle of ‘art’.
Fiona Banner’s reworking of an 80s design aesthetic
Michael Craig-Martin’s typographical musings
Chris Ofili’s whatever
And this!
And if you’d still like one of the above, they are all selling at 50% off at Tate Modern
Here's how it should be done...
Above: Otl Aicher’s carefully conceived graphic styling for the 1972
Munich Olympics with the addition of sensitively selected artists.
Above: Arnold Schwartzman did the same for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics
And as for this...
no, don't get me going!