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By The Drum Team, Editorial

March 9, 2010 | 2 min read

Respected veteran designer and creative advisor Michael Wolff has given a mixed reception to the 2014 Commonwealth Games logo, describing it as a "complicated, overly colourful concoction".

Wolff said he believed the logo had "two different looks" which he described as "a shame".

“When you see portions of it graphically, frozen in mid-movement, and especially when you see it moving, it’s a playful, effortless and beautiful gyroscopic dance of geometry,” Wolff said.

“An unusually elegant solution, but when you see it with its clumsy typography and complicated discordant shapes beneath the type, the gyroscopic feel and the simple elegance vanish, and what’s left is a complicated, overly colourful concoction.

“Which came first, the complicated chicken or the effortless egg? The egg is a pleasure - the chicken, a scrawny mess. One consistent, coherent and harmonious graphic idea would have been far better.”

Wolff was unimpressed by the explanation of the logo which incorporates numbers relating to the games into its design.

“This ‘designer gobbledygook’ or drivel, which, sadly, is used to disguise a lack of confidence in simple beauty, explains the symbol in a way that no one will ever understand, believe or see. It belittles the design and makes you doubt its integrity.”

Wolff is one of the UK design industry’s most respected practitioners and will be one of this year’s judges for the Chip Shop Awards.

The Games identity, created by Marque, was revealed yesterday for the first time. The agency's Mark Noe spoke to The Drum about the identity following the ceremony to unveil it to over 1,000 people.

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