The Lisa Simpson Head Olympic Logo - a sign for our times
Revealed: the ad men behind the logo fiasco | Uk News | News | Telegraph
It can now be revealed that the man who led the design team that created the logo is Patrick Cox, the executive creative director of Wolff Olins, an Islington-based brand consultancy with links to the Labour establishment.
Until Monday, when Lord Coe unveiled the new logo and hailed it "a brand we genuinely believe in" - something of a minority view as it turned out - Mr Cox's career had been glittering. His track record boasts triumphs for...Product Red, the anti-HIV campaign launched last year by Bono, the U2 singer.
..
Since being unveiled on Monday, the logo, reported to have cost £400,000, has faced worldwide ridicule. The design guru Stephen Bayley called it a "puerile mess". The less generous said it looked like the efforts of a delinquent graffiti artist. MPs called it "childish and ridiculous". The logo was condemned by the group Epilepsy Action after it was revealed that at least 22 people had suffered seizures while watching flashing animated footage of it.
To avoid further damage to the London Olympics, the organiser of an online petition against the logo stopped collecting signatures after getting 48,615 signatures in two days.
The Sunday Telegraph has learned that the logo was developed in conditions of such secrecy that most of Wolff Olins's 180 London staff knew little or nothing about it, with the few given security clearance referring to the project only by a codename. Wolff Olins representatives are still forbidden from discussing the project.
...
In overall control of the "brand project" was Brian Boylan, 61, the chairman of Wolff Olins who has worked at the company since the late Sixties.
In that time, Wolff Olins has built impressive links with the Labour establishment. Sarah Brown, the wife of Gordon, the prime minister in waiting, started her career at Wolff Olins after leaving university.
Michael Wolff, the company's co-founder, was credited with creating Labour's red rose symbol in 1986, and in 1998 its representatives were called upon by Tony Blair to be part of a group of "creative thinkers" helping to "rebrand Britain" and create the brief, heady days of "Cool Britannia".
Mr Boylan is a member of the Tate Modern Council and serves on the board of the Government-funded Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment.
....
He is understood to live in a £1 million gated townhouse near Primrose Hill, north London. His neighbours include writers Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller.
David Miliband, the Environment Secretary, Peter Mandelson, the British Commissioner for EU trade, live nearby....
How nuLabour! how Tony! Even down to the "Sofa Government" way of working, and how Gordon! Yesterday, however, there was no sign of Mr Cox, who is in his forties, at the London home he is understood to share with his wife and two children. "I haven't seen him for four or five days," said one neighbour, "pretty much since that awful logo was released. And how much I hate them and everything they leech off us for.
