London Olympics logo – Bringing together the world….except Iran
The Olympic logo has never really been accepted by many since its launch way back in 2007, but a for the first time an entire country is threatening to boycott the games over the logo.
Iran has this week threatened not to send any athletes to the London Olympics because of the logo, although it wasn’t so much that they thought the £400,000 spent on it was a complete waste of money, but more that somehow they’d finally figured it spells “Zion” not “2012″.
Zion is an ancient word which relates to Jerusalem being the “Land of Israel”, and so understandably given the politics in the region, isn’t regarded very highly by the Arab nations. However what is baffling many is why it has taken the government of the country this long to apparently work this out and complain to the London Olympic Organising Committee demanding that the logo be changed. Also, no other Arab countries appear to be worried about this apparent word appearing in the logo.
Unfortunately, Iran’s new stance is unlikely to cause the Olympic logo to be changed at this late stage although one suspects such a change wouldn’t worry the majority of the people in Britain.
It must surely be time to acknowledge that the 2012 logo was not quite what it could have been. Although it does seem to be a bit of a stretch to see ‘Zion’ in it, you have to squint a bit.
Obviously this wasn’t the intention of the designer and I can’t see them re-doing the design at this point. If they haven’t changed it after all the mocking it got upon its release they won’t now!