München 2018 and Other Olympic Logos

It might seem a long time off, but already cities around the world are a planning bids to host the 2018 Winter Olympic Games. One of the cities that has already been confirmed as an applicant is Munich in Germany, and they're currently in the process of trying to find a decent logo to represent their bid. I'm sure we're all aware by now just how much controversy can be caused by a bad Olympic logo.

To find a logo for their 2018 bid, Munich ran a competition and asked people to send in their own logo ideas, and from all the entries a jury have now narrowed it down just to three potential logos.

"Munich snow crystal" by Buttgereit und Heidenreich

"Munich at foehn" by Zeichen & Wunder

"The tracks of the games" by Atelier & Friends

The decision is now down to a public vote. Residents of Germany can go to the München 2018 website and vote for their favourite logo until August 21st.

My money is on number one, although I thoroughly dislike the typography. The typeface in number two is based on Din, commonly regarded as the German typeface, which I think is far more appropriate for their bid. If number two just lost the snowflake in the top left I think it would be a big improvement, it looks as though the designers couldn't quite make their minds up - "Shall we go with the mountain symbol or the snowflake symbol? Hmm... Lets use both".

At this stage the only two other cities confirmed as applicants for the 2018 Olympics are Annecy in France, and Pyeongchang in South Korea who are bidding for the third time running, after failed attempts to host the 2010 and 2014 Winter Olympics. Their proposed logos are both, in my opinion, less interesting than the offerings from Munich, although admittedly I have no idea what the Korean logo says.

Annecy 2018 logo

Pyeongchang 2018 logo

Of course, there's no guarantee that any of these logos will still be in use by the time the 2018 Winter Olympics come around. It's been the trend in recent years for the host city to have one logo during the application process, and then commission a new logo once they win their bid. For example:









Looking at all of these logos, I think they all show an improvement from the candidate logo to the official logo. I believe the London 2012 Olympic logo is the only one to go the other way, being changed from a good logo to a bad one. Oh dear.