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BOO! Getting close to midnight... With thanks (& apologies) to the holographic form of the late, great King of Pop/inventor of Halloween, Michael Jackson, it's time to say...WELCOME TO THE 13TH (wooooo) ANNUAL GAMESBIDS OLYMPIC LOGO COMPETITION! Before beginning, it is customary to acknowledge my fellow Nintendo legend @thatsnotmypuppy, the inventor, & my fellow womb...wait, no @Sir Rols who kept it going, & is again the general fixer-of-issues this time. Last year saw a decent turnout for a competition that took us around the world from Mexico to Mumbai, & once again in 2019, it is my/our pleasure to give the board permission to play Christmas songs all day. This competition is a little unusual, not because of the format (it's the same as last year) but because we have a theme that links the 4 cities. Since the days of Christ, 13 has been considered by many an unlucky/spooky number, so for this 13th competition, all 4 cities have that spooky touch. No need to make your logos spooky though! Let's get haunted... WINTER 2030 CITY ONE: DARMSTADT, GERMANY Located in the vicinity of Frankfurt, Darmstadt may not rank among the most famed German cities, but it's a very fitting place for a spooky excursion. High in the hills overlooking the city, you'll find Frankenstein Castle, said to have inspired the novel &, of course, the monster... A Winter Olympics here would be more surprising than seeing a bolt-necked monster roaming the streets, but how would you brand one? WINTER 2030 CITY TWO: BUCHAREST, ROMANIA Romania might strike as more of a summer sport nation, but they have begun to host & bid for winter events too. Plus anything goes in the logo comp - & you really can't do spooky without Romania. Its uniquely unfortunate history gives it TWO of the most terrifying people to rule in Europe, Vlad the Impaler & Nicolae Ceaucescu. And that's before you start on the whole vampire thing. How would you brand a rather different Winter Games? SUMMER 2032 CITY ONE: NEW ORLEANS, USA How could we not? New Orleans might not be one of the cities often talked about when Uncle Sam wants the Olympic rings again, but as the city of voodoo & jazz funerals, it's a true no-brainer for this one. Throw in all its other cultural specialities & it's frankly amazing it's never been here before. No shortage of possibilities, so how would you brand the Games in the Big Easy? SUMMER 2032 CITY 2: CAIRO, EGYPT (Yes, I know they're not technically in Cairo). We've only had one African city in 12 comps, so it's well past time for another visit. And as AFAIK, we've never had an Arab world city either, where better than the largest city of the continent? There's no shortage of design inspiration here, & from the film The Mummy to the curse of Tutankhamun, there's no shortage of spooks either. How would you brand the Games in the Middle East AND Africa? THE RULES/FORMAT We are, as ever, after logos that encompass the overall feel of the city and local influences that can be tied into a design concept. How can any of these cities articulate graphically what they could bring to future Olympics hosting? What flavour will they bring to the games? Will it inspire any of these to actually bid for the damn thing? The logos should be presented as full colour designs on white background. If you like, however, they can also be presented in black and white or utilised in forms like street banners, t-shirts, apps, vehicles, pins etc. For voting purposes, the main (colour) logo will be used on the polls, & extra stuff is not obligatory, but any extra material you produce may help you “sell” your design better to the wider GamesBids voting membership. Spookiness is not obligatory (the cities are the theme, it's a normal comp) but if you wanna go big on the whole 13 thing, nobody will stop you.  These logos are for the cities as they HOST the games. So you CAN use the rings, and don't need to include the words “Candidate City, Olympic Games 2030/32” or whatever the IOC want this week. Please post your preliminary submissions on this thread. If you want to hold anything back to be presented as a “surprise” when voting starts you can contact me or Rols via PM and I'll tell you where you can send the extra material. However, it would be nice to see as many on-thread submissions as possible for people to chew over in-thread, & to try & get the old buzz back. You can submit logos for any of the cities, & anything up to all 4 of them. However, you cannot enter more than one logo for the same city (see below). So entering one logo for each of Darmstadt, New Orleans & Cairo is fine, but two logos for New Orleans, say, is not fine. You are able, encouraged even, to enter for multiple cities. Feel free to post as many logo designs as you like, & to ask for feedback from our famously discerning electorate. If you really can't decide between your own designs for a city, feel free to start a poll (or to ask for one to be started). When the time comes for voting, however, you will be asked to settle on a maximum of ONLY ONE official logo per city as your official entry. The format depends on the numbers. Most likely, it will be the traditional exhausting exhaustive ballot preferred by the IOC, but if numbers fit & opinion ok, we may have the World Cup-style tournament system. Whatever happens, the winter & summer 'halves' will be entirely separate, there will be two winners in the Olympic comp tradition. The competition is open to all members of GamesBids, or to any new legitimate members who join before the end of the submission period. I, with consultation, will rule on the legitimacy of new members. As you would expect, I will rule on any disputes - always aiming to be as fair as possible in the process. As always, just remember, this is all meant to be fun. Olympic spirit, remember?. Hopefully this will spark up some action on the board. I'll be dipping in, keeping a close eye on things, but otherwise will try and keep my green yoshi-paws off until the polling stages. The deadline for submissions is 1pm London time (that is, midnight in Sydney, as per tradition) on NEW YEAR'S EVE, 31 DECEMBER 2019. Thus, GB will begin the new decade & Olympic year 2020 with the voting. And this is just to alert @Rob. to the existence of the new comp in the hope that he'll do his traditional bit of putting up links to various free design programs etc for the benefit of those who want to take part but may not have the facility at the moment. All that is left to say is thank you Rols once again, and to all participants for having the guts to put your logos up for the annual GamesBids dissection, & may the best logos win. There are too many languages involved to do this properly, so I'll just say GOOD LUCK! 

Emperor's cup final in early January will be the first ever event played here in the finally finished olympic stadium.