The Olympic Games are coming to London in 2012.

London is the capital city of the United Kingdom.

For £400,000, someone came up with a nice logo, which lots of people don't seem to like very much.

It seems to me that a good logo should convey a strong sense of five things:

1. The Olympics
2. London
3. The United Kingdom
4. The year 2012
5. Sport

So I wondered what I could do in an hour that might give an idea of what a good design might be.  I'm not a graphic designer, so this concept is a bit crude.  Sorry.

Here's the clever bit.

If you take the digits '2' '0' '1' '2' you can make quite a nice shape that is both the number 2012 and a kind of human figure, perhaps a runner waiting for the starter's pistol.



And if you have a few together, it could look like several runners lining up at the start line, or racing for the finishing tape.



They're even red, white and blue suggesting the colours of the Union Flag.  Add in an Olympic logo and I think we are getting somewhere.


The tricky bit is London, but I think we might get away with just a skyline featuring some recognisable buildings ancient and modern.


Now, I'm no graphic designer, and I can see that there's a lot wrong here.  The colours are iffy, and that pixellated skyline is off.  The 2012 is a scribble.  It's a concept, but I like it a lot better than the one that's been chosen.

I have an idea.  I want to assert that this work is Copyright (C) 2007 J D A Parsons.  I'd be happy to license it to the London Olympic project for a suitable donation to an appropriate charity of my choice - a small fraction of £400,000 would do the trick.  I'm sure a great graphic designer would take it on from here on a similar basis.

What do you think?  Please vote!

If you like you can also send me comments.