KEY POINTS:
LONDON - The graffiti-like logo for the 2012 London Olympics appeared yesterday to have seen off all competitors and claimed a medal for being the most unpopular logo in British marketing history.
All the early signs were that the year-long research and the consumer testing that went into producing the stark, jagged image had been wasted. Less than two days after the logo was unveiled to an unimpressed public, more than 26,000 people had signed an on-line petition for it to be scrapped, with only a handful supporting it.
Perhaps the kindest thing said about the logo came from London Mayor Ken Livingstone, who remarked that no matter how much people disliked it, it was "not the end of the world". He added: "These are matters of individual taste. I'm fine with it."
Others have compared the image to a "toileting monkey" or a "broken swastika".
One petition in support described it as "a superb representation of the diverse and colourful society and culture we live in" with "a sense of 1980s graffiti art".
Bookmakers Graham Hill offered odds of 10/1 yesterday that the logo will be scrapped by the end of the year.
Designers Wolff Olins referred all inquiries to the London 2012 press office, where staff said they had nothing to say about the logo.
Meanwhile, animated footage promoting the logo was removed from the organisers' website amid concern it could trigger epileptic fits.
The video clip shows a diver plunging into a pool.
A London 2012 spokeswoman said the concerns surrounded a four-second piece of animation shown at the logo's launch on Monday and recorded by broadcasters.
She emphasised it was not the logo itself which was the focus of health worries.
"It was a diver diving into a pool which had multicolour ripple effects."
The clip was removed after comments by Professor Graham Harding, an expert in clinical neurophysiology who developed a test used to measure photo-sensitivity levels in animated TV material.
"The logo should not be shown on TV at all at the moment," he said. "It fails the Harding FPA machine test, which is the machine the television industry uses to test images."
He said the footage did not comply with regulatory guidelines.
Charity Epilepsy Action noted there had been reports that people had had seizures while watching the animated footage.
The BBC reported on its website that a listener had rung its London radio station to say he and his girlfriend had suffered seizures while watching it.
PREVIOUS SYMBOLS OF PUBLIC DISAPPROVAL
THE BA ETHNIC TAILFINS
The mission: For decades, the tailfins of planes owned by British Airways or its predecessors had a design based on the Union Jack. But in 1997 chief executive Bob Ayling, stressing that 60 per cent of the airline's passengers were non-British, insisted on something more cosmopolitan. The red, white and blue was replaced by a variety of multicoloured designs ranging from Delft pottery to Chinese calligraphy, at a cost of £60 million ($159 million).
The reaction: Margaret Thatcher was so disgusted by the change that when she spotted a replica of the new design at a stand at the Conservative Party conference she draped a handkerchief over it. Richard Branson, the head of rival Virgin, crowed: "The squiggly lines didn't work and their profits have dive-bombed since they introduced them."
BT'S PRANCING PIPER
The mission: In 1991, British Telecom had only recently been privatised, and needed to distinguish itself from the old state-owned telecommunications system. It called in Wolff Olins - the same design firm behind the 2012 Olympics logo - which came up with a blue and red prancing piper, which appeared on telephone bills, on the company's 37,000 vans and in 33,000 phone booths.
The reaction: The Sun's front page declared: "BT blows £5m on a trumpet." As it turned out the figure was hugely underestimated - the total was more like £50 million. Stephen Bayley, of the Design Museum, described it as "Wolff Olins at its blustering, mature worst". In 2003 BT began phasing out the piper.
THE CONSERVATIVE OAK
The mission: Launched in September, this was part of David Cameron's effort to shake off the vote-losing aspects of the party's past, in which the colour blue featured endlessly. The new look is caring, steady and as English as the oak. The London Market Agency was paid £40,000 for the logo.
The reaction: Tim Montgomerie, editor of the Conservative Home website: "It's a really ugly thing." One blogger on a Tory website wrote: "It looks like a 3-year-old has been let loose with a crayon."
- INDEPENDENT, REUTERS
