mattygs

Must say those KL98 Closing Ceremonies were one of the most tedious modern ceremony events I have seen. Apart from a nice 10-12 minute cultural interlude, the whole ceremony looked like it was designed by some ministry of the Malaysian Government (which it probably was). From memory it included a marathon speech including numerous gulps of water and throat clearing by the chief of the Org Committee.

Cheers, at least Im not the only one who has Atlanta has a place of interest, and in your case, you've been and done it. Likewise, as mentioned earlier by someone, Sarajevo is a place that I wanted to head to a few years ago, unfortunately the brutal cuts had to be made when time was starting to run out. Be interesting to hear your thoughts on Albertville now? I was quite pleased with my day spent in Lillehammer, but from what a few others have said, maybe Albertville is somewhere to miss in favour of some of those other french Alpine towns?

Agree with you about Munichs Olympic park. It's a fantastic place. It's such a vibrant living public space, a great testament to the work done for 72. Here's a photo from my trip there in 2011, spent a long time here, great place to spend a summers day. It's quite a surreal experience visiting certain Olympic cities. The cities where the Olympics have quite clearly shaped the city in question. Maybe not so apparent in the Tokyos of this world, but certainly a feeling you get when walking through a city like Barcelona. Even more so, some of the smaller places, like Lillehammer and even Nagano. It's quite strange also, walking through a place like Torino. No immediate sense of being an Olympic city, and then you'll all of a sudden see an old *Passion Lives Here* hoarding . I felt that in Athens too, you'll see a phevos soft toy hanging from a tourist shop cart in Syntagma square. haha

Be interesting to find out what Olympic host cities everyone has visited (especially for some of our newer members), but almost more importantly - what Olympic host city you would most like to visit, and why? * I've been lucky enough to visit Olympia, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Sydney, Melbourne, Barcelona, Rome, Athens, Stockholm, Berlin, Lillehammer, Oslo, Innsbruck, Nagano, Munich and Torino. There's some fantastic Olympic hosts that I would like to cross off my list, some of the great cities of the world right down to some of the most charming Alpine villages. But funnily enough, Atlanta seems to draw me. I don't know what it is about the city, but I just have some kind of urge to go out of my way (because it would be out of my way I imagine) to visit it. Im not entirely sure how much Olympic legacy is visable, but I have heard some really good things about the way Atlanta has developed since 96. I guess I would put it along side Moscow, again, just for curiosity .

Im not so sure, have we really had that much success with regional specific logos when it comes to the Olympic Games? Surely that has moreso been the domain of the bid logo. (and a number of those have had me scratching my head - Stockholm 2004s based on a sculpture in a Swedish sculpture part, I didn't understand that for years) Of course we have the Sydneys, Beijings and Athens of this world who have had successful logos which are quite relevant to their culture, but we've had alot that haven't been that obvious. Barcelona's is probably one of the more trailblazing memorable logos, and while you can kind of see Spanish elements in there, Im sure you could find another handful of nations that could make that logo their own. Is the Albertville logo any more relevant to Albertville, than this is to PC? You could argue it's more pleasing to the eye, but is that beside the point? It's a sailing boat mixed with a flame, in the French colours. Could it work equally as the logo to a Games in Copenhagen though? I guess with some time having passed, Im not thinking the PC logo is any nicer looking, but at the same time, I can see more potential in it working as a brand.

An interesting point there. Let's imagine the reaction if the Olympic logo (the 5 rings) had been unveiled today, as the new logo of this new Olympic movement. Im thinking it wouldn't have had a very good reaction. Of course, it's apples and oranges - a city distinctive logo to one of a generic sports event, but still, I don't think we would have been heaping praise on it. In any case, I think the PC logo looks abit better in 1 colour, like at the bottom of the pc website.

I guess this is where we become real geeky trainspotters. A few that I noticed ... - Atlanta 96: *during the welcome to the world segment in the opening ceremony , one of the cheerleader girls (while standing on the hands of one of the guy cheerleaders) starts to drop lower and lower * During the Happy Birthday at the end of the closing ceremony they displayed either the rings or 100 (i can't remember which one) in pyro, but it was real smokey , so you couldn't really see much * Stevie Wonder was void of audio for a little bit of a song during one of his performances - Nagano 98: the cauldron is extinguished, but then lights up again Again, most of these things are silly nit picking, but still, they happened. However, one of the biggest fails would have been the Vancouver Hallelujah performance. I believe the intention was to have the crowd turn their glowlights on row by row, so the light radiated to the back row, but instead they all turned them on at the same time.

I would love to know the logic behind such a horrible basic font. At the end of the day you can't plaster the logo every few meters on the fop signage, but you can use a wordmark and mix it up to make it work. Even some of the more basic fonts of recent logos have worked well in this regard. The Athens one even. Surely they could have picked something abit more memorable, even Barcelona's font was more distinctive than this.

I think one of the best applications of the logo from that video is the facepaint version of it.

The simplistic idea isn't a bad one. I think the composition though is one of its biggest downfalls. I look at it, and at best it looks like the design of a poster. The thing just spreads out in all directions with no form and position. Usually the Olympic rings have the magic power of grounding even a below par logo, making it all come together, but they can't manage it with this. It just looks like a little kid has been given a piece of a4 people, and drawn a house and a snowflake. Can it be saved? Thing with logo, is they said they had a plan, and to an extent, they did - and it improved in most peoples eyes I think , even if it was only slightly , Not so sure where they can go with this though. It needs to be framed somehow, and they certainly need to change the font. Even the similarly stickish Borjomi 2014 bid logo had more form than this.

I can see how the logo has potential in being integrated in other aspects of Games design, however, the logo in itself - Im not sold. Would have been nice if the video was translated into English.

I will say though, it's great they didn't use a traditional Asian Games style logo. Font seems abit too basic for my liking, not much room for wordmark usage here

Are they taking the piss? It's horrible.

I mightn't go that far, but I agree it's a classy classic Olympic logo. I remember being quite impressed with it back i 96. I've always said that Atlanta had the blessing or curse (whatever way you want to look at it) of having to incorporate two distinct elements in all of their branding - from logo, to look to ceremonies. They had an obligation to have both Atlanta's culture and the historical Olympic theme working in tandem with pretty much everything they did. Maybe it was a happy coincidence that there are alot of parallels , visually, between Olympic historical images and those of Atlanta (Greek architecture/Greek Revival Architecture, Olive branch/ city of trees) etc etc

I think it just doesn't have the impact as it's not as visual as the Olympic torch. I give credit to the CGF for not following the footsteps of these other multi sport Games and having a bastard version of the Olympic torch. They created their own tradition, and I think it's respected now, but as much as recent hosts have tried to give it a slightly modern and eyecatching slant to it, it still doesn't excite like fire. I think there is room for a regional relay. If Australia or NZ hosted for example, it's appropriate to take it round the Pacific. Likewise, if South Africa hosted, a trip around African Com nations would be appropriate. I don't think there is a need for it to visit every city. Whereas the Olympic torch naturally brings people to see it, it seems like the Queens baton (for the most part, when visiting random Com Nations) , is just a marketing event for the Com Games federation of each nation, or an excuse to get a bunch of primary school kids out.

Im going to go with previous hosts , with the extensive host nation (and at a stretch host region) relay on top of that.

I think Barcelona's logo was more a case of I think Barcelona's logo was more a case of it being an intangible reflection of Barcelona, as opposed to geographical/landmark/cultural references. Looking at the logo, kind of gives you that feeling of a warm open arms welcome under the Catalan sky, aswell as those familiar colours of Spain. I think we just need to stay well clear of calligraphy references for the 2018 logo, as it's been well overdone. It will be interesting though, as the host city has no real well known icons to show in the logo. I also don't see the region as having the drive of Sochi to brand itself on the world stage (apart from the aspiration to be one of Asias top winter sport hubs of course), so it will be interesting to see what they deliver.

Im looking forward to this, the bid logo is nicey nice, but it's not the strongest mark to be trying to market the 2018 Games with, so it's a smart move to get a new logo asap.

I think the Commonwealth Games are at a different stage to the Asians, and this is reflected in the logos. The Asian hosts are still trying very hard to cement themselves in the first world. where that is not so much an issue with the majority of current Com Games hosts (of course, with the likes of Delhi, this changes). It's not just logos though. There wouldn't be many other multi sport events in the world where the opening ceremony revolves around a duck, or which features people in raincoats acting as human fountains or teddy bears stuck to frocks. Again, I think the Com Games hosts are just generally more established. Alot of the Asian hosts seem to like using caligraphic strokes to portray athletes too, I think maybe the world should make a collective effort to move on from that.

Yeah, they seem to have the CGF Tribar as a light projector which has the logo as the disco ball, all swirling around the Q1 in the middle.

I guess the Gold Coast is..... maybe more comfortable in its global position (or perhaps, position in the Commonwealth) to come out with something that would double as a rebranding of the city - I think they kind of already did that with their *pink dot* branding that they recently came out with. I don't think they had any gigantic conceptual slant they wanted to run with, they just want to run a community minded sports Commonwealth Games. With all that taken into account, they probably didn't feel the need to be too abstract or clever with the logo - they didn't feel the need to try too hard. It's a vibrant punchy logo, one which is obviously also abit 3d, it'll work quite well.

Torino 2006 But yeah, it's energetic enough, has the skyline aswell as the outline of the Q1. Though there seem to have been a few more visually pleasing pathways in the brand video.

I like it, however, it seems to be a very near twin of the Torino 2006 piazza design, and a little bit of the Brisbane Expo sunsails logo.

Yeah, I was last there in may 11. I usually make yearly trips to Brisbane, but it's a toss up if I end up making it to the Gold Coast for a bit during the visit. I just have more friends in Brisbane, and to be honest, like the city a lot more.

I think shades of Victoria 94 in that one aswell. Im guessing that it all represents a bunch of medals and a V for victory, which obviously was the basis of the nice logo the Canadians came up with for 94. Christchurch 74 Victoria 94