What challenges in black and white? I just looked at it that way and it looks the same - three people, some words, and the Olympic rings.

I can't figure out what the shape of the object is supposed to represent. Looks like a pacifier (?) at best. Very nicely executed though, no doubts about that.

Not grayscale; black and white. I know few people use faxes and/or cheap photocopiers anymore, but I still keep it in mind. When colors or gradients are used to delineate shapes, I always get nervous.

I hate the fact that everything done in Brazil/Rio has the same idea behind it "friendly people and energy", they always have to use either sugarloaf mountain or the statue of Christ the Redeemer and ALWAYS use all the flag colors.
I think the scale is off and I don't like the typeface.
I'm from Rio and I hate it. :x

Ah, so it's even more unoriginal than I thought!

We had the pan american games here in 2007. Sugarloaf mountain is there and even the candidate city for the Olympics had the mountain reflected making a heart shaped logo.

I really don't even see the point in Olympic logos anymore. Why waste all that time and money on something that's never better than just typing it out in Helvetica and pressing CMD+O real quick? They could have hired Unimark to outline a logo standard back in the 60s and been much better off.

"Rio 2016" seems to me crying out for an ambigram... ;^)

A bunch of different colored people holding hands...feels so...expected.
I'm very underwhelmed.

It needs more Lance Wyman.

Alaskan - I looked at it in black and white as you show it, and I don't see the problem. I'm not saying the design is good in other ways, but what is the "challenge" in black/white?

There are logos where when they's put in black and white information is lost, and they become less clear than when in color.

In this logo, in black/white we can still see Olympic rings, text and the three people still are clear despite there being no gradient.

So what is the problem?

I don’t particularly like it, especially the “three happy people” part.
But I like the flow of Rio 2016 and especially the 1_6 ligature.

The logo lacks in inovation and originality. There was no digging deep to come up with something unique. The idea of three colored people holding hands leaves a lot to be desired as far as unique ideas are concerned

Forrest, clearly it's good enough for you, so I'm not going to argue with you.

Logo looks Matisse-like to me.
I like the lettering, especially in the year.

Nice dodge Alaskan - I asked you a simple question (twice) you clearly cannot answer, so I don't think you could possibly "argue" with me.

Wow, forrest, you're quite the aggressive bully. You must be a real joy to work with.

In black and white, the humans are lost. The only reason you see them is because you saw the gradient version first. Without the color and the gradient, it's ambiguous. Pretty, but ambiguous.

The fact that you don't agree with (or comprehend) my opinion is not my problem. I didn't design it, and I'm not your professor.

OK - finally an answer to my question. You're saying that someone seeing it in B/W would not recognize the people as people. I think most viewers would, and for the few that didn't it still is the Olympics in Rio with some organic happy object. But we can disagree about that. We can can differ on opinions. At least you're trying to back up your opinion with some reasoning and stating the reasoning.

"you don't agree with (or comprehend)" In terms of comprehension, you didn't say it clearly - you just assumed others would agree with you.

"You must be a real joy to work with."

I had to direct a post at your three times (3!) to get an answer and the problem is mine?

That's funny.

I answered your question in my first reply.

>Logo looks Matisse-like to me.

that's what I was trying to connect. It's reminding me of that mural he did at that museum near Philly...

"I answered your question in my first reply."

No you didn't - you gave half an answer. Saying gradients can be problematic isn't the whole of your reasoning.

This logo is a shame.

OK, it is beautiful, nicely done and quite good on colours (although it suffers when used in B&W). But the worst is it's a plagiarism.

The dancing circle can be seen in William Blake's Oberon, Titania and Puck, from 1786, which served as reference to Matisse's Dance in 1910. The dancing circle is worldwide known and was already used in Telluride Foundation logo. This logo was itself also copied in 2004, in a Bahia's carnival mark.

I'm pretty sure the creators of Rio 2016 (Tátil agency) know these references and former usage of a dancing circle, especially Matisse's paint and Bahia's logo. In their site, they claim to have done a very elaborated and highly creative work (!). No mention was made about all these antecedents.

Besides the plagiarism, there is also the "friendly" overused idea. As Babs pointed, there is a kind of obsession to picture Brazil as a paradise of friendship in sunny beaches. This is a bad tendence that our own designers like to propagate, producing a quite sterile and repeating aesthetics.

And one cannot forget that Olympic Games actually have almost nothing to do with friendship between nations. It's plain competition. Coubertin advocated it as an oportunity to fair, edifying disputes between men in order to achieve longer, stronger and taller results, always within high spirits. But even he did not conceived the Games as a love and pace apotheosis. So, the idea behind this logo is also unreal and maladjusted.

Among the most common uses for this logo will be in stitched appliques and screen prints on clothing, which are pretty low-fidelity media. This logo, as shown above would likely be mangled unmercifully when reproduced as an applique on a hat or a jacket.

However, I do think this design could easily be tailored to create versions that will work for hats and tee-shirts as well as for black & white & low-res requirements such as the cardboard boxes the merchandise is shipped in and for faxes. It would be surprising if this hasn't been taken into consideration already.

That said... What were they thinking?

:o)

Don't know about you, but is anyon seeing the word "Rio" in the people dancing in a circle? The middle person's head is the dot on the i, isn't it?

Anyway, it put me in mind of two things:

The Brasil 2014 World Cup logo, colourwise.

The Unilever logo, typographically speaking, at least.

Now that you mention it, I can see Rio in the people, but it's so subtle that it just looks sloppy. I suppose the basic shapes are there and it certainly reads a lot more like Rio in the b&w version, but I would say it's far too illegible for the hidden "Rio" to have any real conceptual value.

Besides, the way it's constructed my eye flows from the leg of the R (green person's right hand) right into the o, which really destroys any chance at reading the people as letterforms.

The logo definitely loses a lot when printed in black & white.

But these days many graphic designers & their clients aren't as concerned about how logos look in black and white, because they communicate to their clients primarily by color media such as the internet, television, etc, and when they need printed pieces they print in color. If their logo looks crummy on a fax or xerox, it's not a big deal to them since that's not how most consumers will see their logo.

I'm not saying it's a good thing (I'm old school and believe a logo should always work well in black and white), but it's definitely a trend these days.

It seems that no one will like the logo unless he himself designed it. I hope that's not completely truth, though. ;)

I don't think it's that at all flyonthewall. I think there are a lot of successful logos out there. This just isn't one of them.

I'm not even saying that it's entirely the fault of the designers who are responsible for this particular mark. We've all dealt with difficult clients and been forced (at one point or another) to take creative direction from someone who isn't qualified to give it. With something as big as the olympics, undoubtedly a lot of people had their hands in this project. Unfortunately also with something as steeped in storied imagery as the olympics, expectations are bound to be high. It's just a shame to see the design fall short like this.

.

It's just that I think it's one of the better ones.
Let's look at all of the logos from the past and try to put things into perspective:

http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/03/39-olympic-logos-from-1924-to-2012/

Tokyo '64, Montréal '72, Sapporo '72, Barcelona '92, and Torino '06 are great logos, but Nagano '98 is the best one IMHO. In other hand, Munich '72, Lake Placid '80 and Mexico '68 are unexpressives. London '12 is one of the worst things I ever saw in graphic design.

As I said, Rio 2016 is beautiful, but it's a partial copy from other works and uses an inadequate idea.

Organizers of the Rio Olympics are on the defensive after similarities between the logo for the 2016 Games and a Colorado-based charity foundation were discovered.

The logo, which was released on New Year's Eve at a massive celebration at Copacabana beach, depicts figures embracing in a circular motion. It was soon noticed that the design resembles the logo for The Telluride Foundation, a Colorado charity chaired by Norman Schwarzkopf.

_Yahoo

Read the full article.

SB

even though i hate the logo i don't think it's a copy of the Telluride foundation logo. I can see the resemblance but come on, people holding hands is a pretty old idea.

@nick job Unilever, that's it!

The Olympic rings are already a logo. This is a logo, a logo and a logo.

The Olympic rings are already a logo. This is a logo, a logo and a logo.

Word.

A vast number of logos already exist, so it's virtually impossible to create one that's unlike any existing ones. And being influenced by famous works of art is totally legitimate; people in all occupations, including graphic design, draw inspiration and ideas from those who've gone before.

BUT... I think the Olympic logo resembles the Telluride logo a little too closely. Perhaps it was subconscious or coincidental, but whatever the reason it's too close.

You can't really accuse one logo of plagiarism of another when the first one looks like a thousand other logos. Telluride didn't invent multi-colored people. There are thousands of weight loss companies out there using similar imagery.

The Rio version is formally executed well but conceptually it's transparent/boring. It's painfully obvious and completely lacks subtlety. Looking at it, I can almost feel someone jabbing me in the ribs saying "Get it? The Olympics are about international cooperation and the people are different colors!"

I'd almost be willing to bet that this was a throw-away concept that got presented to the client to pad the presentation, and the client went for it. It happens all the time.

Definitely agree about it being far too many logos for a logo.

The company(tatil.com.br) behind the 2016 Rio Olympics logo has released a video explaining the concept behind the symbol. You may view it here, it's in Portuguese.

Any idea what make are the markers used by them?

SB

Many countries are multicoloured these days.
So I don't believe that different-coloured humanoids holding hands represents either different countries, or Brazil.
Besides, it misrepresents the essence of the games, which is competition, not cooperation.
It's just feel-good pleasantry, an unnecessary manifestation of the bullshitting involved in the design process (strategy is not, after all, design), redundiating the multi-colour of the rings.
IMO the wordmark suffices (hey, I am a Typophile); ditch the extra-terrestrials.

When a logo requires an infographic to be explained it’s probably time to head back to the drawing board.

Is this summary correct, then? "The logo design tries too hard to be everything to everybody, which, as Everybody Knows, is impossible; the Too-Many-Cooks syndrome."

New to this thread, so I just say I actually like the rythm of the wordmark, and that weird pacifier/diaphragm is something designed by comittee.

This would do nicely.

^^much better^^

I honestly don't understand what would be so bad about having all olympic identity marks conform to using the rings along with a nice type setting of the year and city name. There are plenty of other applications of the identity that can/should be more expressive, but I feel like cities are losing sight of the fact that the olympic games already have an identity mark. They should be trying to find a way to make their city work within the existing identity, not the other way around.

http://cathyofcalifornia.typepad.com/cathy_of_california/2008/09/index.html

Impossible to top Lance Wyman's design.

Tomi: yep
Nick: yep

Ok... Wyman, ok Aicher...
but compared to the nowdays italian design, also the Rio 2016 logo looks much better than the visual culture of berlusconian peninsula.

Tomi from Suomi's is nice.
I loved the Mexico designs.

I'm not going to add to the stream of arguments for or against the logo, but just want to add that even though many of us might like to see a purely typographical logo (like your modification, Tomi from Suomi), the current IOC rules regarding olympic emblems make it very hard to differ much from the concept we have seen for so many years now (logo on top of city name and year on top of olympic rings)...

The city name has to be included, it has to make clear reference to the host city/country, the rings must not occupy more than 30% of the logo area and must not be modified, and the logo cannot consist of the city name alone. On top of that, certain symbols like the olympic flame/torch must not be used (as Chicago learned during their bidding process). etc. etc.

(and in a way this even makes me appreciate the London logo a little more, it must have been a real fight getting it approved by the IOC)

Then I think it's about time that the IOC revisits their branding guidelines. Olympic logo designs have been consistently bad for awhile now. That should tell them something.

I liked the typography of the recent Vancouver Winter Olympics.
Consistent, strong personality, with a contemporary sports vibe.
Still wear the "t".

I wonder what the Rio type will be like.

Oh, I love it.
it's dancing,it's Sugarloaf, it says Rio, and I hope the designers are proud of their work.