Athletically speaking, we here in the U.S. are spoiled right now, as our four major professional sports are all in-season at once. On the global stage, though, many people are already looking ahead to 2024, when Paris will host its third Summer Olympics. Last week, the event’s organizers released its logo and, well, let’s just say many observers weren’t ready to give the designers a gold medal for creativity.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B35C5Z8HfXg/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet
We cannot even imagine what it would be like to please everyone, as it seems that some folks make being a contrarian their livelihood. In this case, the internet has again proven the source of backlash and ribbing over a logo, no matter how reverent the creation is supposed to be. Regarding its components, here’s how the Olympic Channel described the logo on Twitter:
The gold medal, eternal like victory. The Olympic flame, bringing people together through sport. Marianne, French national symbol who encourages us all to be egalitarian, sharing and generous.
While the words to describe it possess a poetic quality, the reception to the visuals has become a delight for critics, with many choosing to take a comedic approach to likening the logo to well-known symbols, objects and people, including the Tinder logo, Olay’s logo, the hairdo that Jennifer Aniston sported for a time on “Friends,” and a hairstyle donned by singer Carly Rae Jepsen, among many others.
Anyone else think the Paris olympics logo looks like the tinder logo? pic.twitter.com/hiXMGivesp
— sad potato (@gazpacho_buford) October 25, 2019
Is Paris Olympics 2024 sponsored by Olay ? pic.twitter.com/5HDrNWDUXQ
— INDIAN (@risingindian9) October 29, 2019
https://twitter.com/_privatelawyer/status/1186693119766601728?s=20
The Paris 2024 Olympics emblem has the eternal spirit of Carly Rae Jepsen. pic.twitter.com/fKu8aK9xcs
— Tony Gomez (@gonytomez) October 21, 2019
Given the clout that the Olympics hold, one would expect for the planning and design period behind the logo to be quite lengthy and scrutinized. With the explosion of social media, nothing is ever going to escape the eye of those who thrive on hoping that people could have rethought their design ideas and execution. We could just see detractors shouting one of their most frequent utterances—“You had one job!”—and adding that since the 2024 Summer Olympics are seemingly so far away, there was no need to issue the logo so soon.
We wonder how the madding crowd might have reacted had the critiqued symbol come out, say, three years from now. No matter how many hypothetical revisions or considerations the overseers might have tried in this imagined waiting stage, opponents still would have tried out their schtick on their fellow social media users, and design field workers would have sounded off, too.
We are 57 months away from the beginning of these particular Olympics, so one wonders what sort of grief the international community will continue to give the team behind the logo as the Paris event approaches. We expect for there to be a fresh set of rebukes at the conclusion of next year’s summer festivities in Tokyo, as the organizers will then pass the Olympic torch to the Parisian representatives and give naysayers another chance to do what they do best.
