Here at Yellow Car Design we’re big football fans so are understandably looking forward to this summer’s World Cup. To be honest: even more so than usual due to being in Canada while it’s on. We get to support England without all the usual hype and ridiculousness that surrounds an English World Cup campaign. Hopefully this time they will forget about the WAGS, play as a team, learn how to take penalties and take advantage of what is a fairly open tournament (yeah, who am I kidding?).

As this is a design blog, we’ll need to bring it around to World Cup based design… First up is the mascot Zakumi who is apparently a ‘Mascot with Attitude‘, although he doesn’t actually display any of this ‘attitude’ and looks like he easily fits in with all those lame characters that aren’t Sonic in any of his games. While better than the London 2012 mascots which it would have a job to be worse than at the end of the day it’s a bit bland. The mascot is an anthropomorphised leopard but could quite honestly be any type of anime influenced cat-boy and with some minor editing to the colours could be used by pretty much any country with some tangible links to big cats. While I understand that the mascot should appeal to kids as well as be fun it really should say something about the country in general as while obviously the football is the main draw an event as big as a World Cup is a massive opportunity to showcase what’s great about the country hosting.

Another piece of World Cup design we stumbled upon was this World Cup Calendar Poster which has somehow received a mention by Creative Review. While for a good cause (Unicef Soccer Aid) and actually quite nice looking in a generic kind of way I’ve got to wonder why it warrants a mention by Creative Review. To me it doesn’t actually say anything about football. Granted: it’s a nice use of text and colour but other than the countries being shown in their respective kit colour (or for the teams who use white their away kit colour so New Zealand football team who go by the nickname of ‘All whites’ are shown in black which to me instantly makes me think rugby but I guess this is a OK solution to the problem posed) there is little else that makes this standout as a football related image.

Another problem is the reverse side is fairly confusing with not much space, the creator posted a link in the comments to show people how it works as many who had commented on the post brought up this problem but while his solution is OK for the group stages once the tournament has left this stage it again gets overly confusing and the lack of space in the later rounds means you’ll have trouble filling in both the team and the scores (especially if you use a big bold marker pen like he does in his example for the earlier game results). Weirdly it also doesn’t seem to have a location to write down the eventual tournament winner (unless he wants you to write it over the grey text at the bottom on top of the sponsors) which to me at least seems a massive oversight, surely this should be the major focal point of the poster as after all it’s what all the teams there for leaving it out is like a massive anticlimax.

Anyway it’s still quite nice looking and for a good cause but to me it’s a case of too much form and not enough function that would have been much better had a little more time and thinking being spent on it.

]]> 0 Administrator http://yellowcardesign.com/blog/?p=942 2010-05-21T18:19:23Z 2010-05-21T14:52:26Z

London 2012 Mascots

As regular readers may already know (if there are any left that is, sorry for the lack of updates we have been busy in a good way but it has meant this has had to take a back seat for a little while) here at Yellow Car design we’re big fans of Olympic Design and to tie in with the recent Vancouver 2010 Winter games we made a post giving our views on all the Winter Olympic mascots there has been (although Vicky’s favourite were the Vancouver mascots I have a soft spot for the fruity cowboy/girl bears from Calgary 88 ).

Yesterday the mascots were revealed for the upcoming 2012 Summer Olympics to be held in London and they’re unsurprisingly (after the debacle that is the 2012 logo) rubbish! They look like a cross between Earthworm Jim and the secondary characters in 90′s kids show Reboot which after been melded together have then being polished into an inch of their life.

Earthworm Jim

Apparently they were designed with the help of focus groups made up of children and families which to me is a major no no. All focus groups do is basically make everything flat and beige, anything that stands out or has character is taken away as somebody in the group won’t like it leaving you with a finished article that while has function has very little form. Could you imagine David Carson changing his early style because somebody who viewed say a copy of Raygun had trouble reading it? Of course not and had he we would have been robbed of one of the great Graphic Design innovators of the last 20 years and while not really such a big deal the 2012 Summer Olympics not only have a shitty logo but now also have two metal slugs to go with it, thanks focus groups you rock!

Okay deep breaths, reading through the BBC article linked above there is the odd good thing about them: while at first the names seem pretty lame the reasons for them are quite good and the linking back to the history of the Olympics and how Britain played a part in the modern version is a nice touch and maybe gives kids a reason to study the Olympics in more detail as well as showing Britain in a good light. Also trying to bring other parts of the country into the Olympics by showing how they helped in the creation is a good idea although I’m sure if that’s how you’re going to be included they’d rather not be.

But then they ruin the good will by telling us that the mascots wear the Olympic rings as friendship bracelets which is just tacky… If these Olympics had been when I was young the mascots would have ended up looking like Mr T then having Olympic themed pogs, stickers, Game Boys or whatever else was flavour of the month in the school yard at the time.  The same children who gave these ideas have probably already moved onto many different things leaving the mascots out-dated before they Olympics have even taken place.

They’re also going to have their own Facebook and Twitter pages, sign up kids to read riveting updates such as ‘Sport is enjoyable’, ‘ The Olympics are good’, ‘We’re having acceptable levels of fun!’. I’m sure there also going to be an iPhone app on the way as well as whatever else is considered to be at the forefront of Internet technology. While I understand the reason for using these methods to connect I really just hate the way everything has to feature them in some way. If you ever watch the CBC Toronto news and the iDesk with Mike Wise 90% of the content is just whatever Apple, Google, Twitter and Facebook are doing that day. It’s like the easiest and most pointless job in the world but for some reason gets a major slot on the news where it just basically gives free advertising. Even though they have all innovated in the way we communicate and use the internet, at the end of the day (and maybe this is just me) it’s all rubbish and I would rather have a proper catch up with somebody I haven’t seen in years rather than have them  ‘like’ my update on what I ate for dinner…

This is going on way too long, the 2012 Olympic Mascots are awful and sit proudly alongside the terrible logo if you want to see for yourself  in more detail please click this link.

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Shepard Fairey

Way before Shepard Fairey became famous for having designed the Obama “HOPE” poster, we went to one of his exhibition at Stolenspace Gallery, a very cool place in London (http://www.stolenspace.com). We fell in love with the picture above (it was gigantic; the size of a wall so very impressive) and decided that we wanted it as artwork in the bedroom. We got a print of it, framed it and put it on the wall. Unfortunately, when we moved from England to Canada we were unable to take it with us so it’s still there, along with *sigh* our design books, portfolios and other stuff *sigh*.

That was back in 2007, so I had almost forgot about my love for that print until I came across the 2010 Manifesto for the Labour Party (UK). Even though it’s probably unintended, it does look a bit like a weak imitation of the Obey poster… Except that instead of looking at a polluted city the couple on the manifesto are looking at an nuclear explosion at the sun — but seriously; let’s be realistic — when did the UK become such a sunny destination???

2010 Manifesto

In the first image, the tag line These sunsets are to die for! actually makes sense with the picture in the way that yes, pollution will eventually kill you, no matter how lovely it makes the sky look.

On the second one they’re apparently staring into the future or as the manifesto says A future fair for all. I don’t really see how a blinding sunrise signifies a ‘A future fair for all’… To me it’s saying that they’re staring into the abyss, an uncertain future so keep those closest to you close as what’s coming might not be good times. This is basically the last thing you want to hear from a party trying to get your vote and really poor work by the design team as they have (to me at least) created an image that does the opposite of what it’s supposed to… One thing is for sure: the second image won’t make it as artwork for the bedroom for sure!

Vick @ Yellow Car Design