JayCor

What I love: The imagery: The way the design is engraved is really well done. It just looks cool. The layout: The way the Rings/Agitos are offset from center, and the reverse as well. The designer/layout (was it the same guy who passed away over the summer? Such a terrible loss) is phenomenal. I've been consistently blown away by the "look" of these Games. The ribbon As has been said, classy and subtle. I'm a fan of "less is more" and this meets it. The shape: especially of the Paralympic medal (and how it echoes the shape of the logo) The story behind the medals: Very cool way to include the FN community as well as make it modern. What I like: The concept: I'm a huge fan of the "non-traditional" elements, especially seen in things like medal design, flame lighting, et al. IMO the best medals were Albertville (in crystal), Lillehammer (in granite), and Torino (using negative space) -- I'll begrudgingly include Nagano's lacquer, even though I really thought they looked tacky, especially with the color logo, and I'll give points to Salt Lake for shape. The uniqueness: Each medal has a different "view" of the original artwork? That's pretty awesome. If you lay enough side-by-side, will you get a rough recreation of the original piece? What I don't like: The shape: See above, in re: concept. I like the idea of the waves/mountains/etc. reflected in the medal, but I believe the execution didn't really come off as well as they'd hoped. When I look at the medals in those warped shapes, I'm reminded of Dali (not necessarily a bad thing), or as one paper put it, "like a vinyl record that's been sitting on the dashboard in the sun for too long" (or something like that). Also, the shape is the same for each medal? While it probably would have been prohibitively expensive to alter the die for each medal, I believe the repeated shape takes away from the intended uniqueness of each medal. In the end, I'm giving the medals a high B+/low A-. Outstanding imagery and layout, and a great design/shape concept. The execution is lacking, though. Truthfully, I believe the impact of the design (Corrine Hunt's imagery, the individual "view" of each medal, the offset Rings/Agitos) would have been amazing enough without the added element of the shape.