The Sochi’s 2014 Olympic logo: Futuristic or Flat?

Olympic logos seem to always be shrouded in debate and they are often the focus of much international attention and discussion. Do you remember the Olympic logo that was released for the Summer 2012 Olympic games in London? This Olympic logo (pictured below with the other Olympic logos of the past) was one of the most controversial Olympic logos to date and its release provoked both positive and negative responses from around the world. Although Sochi’s 2014 Olympic logo didn’t quite attract the same amount of attention, it did spark its own reactions and responses from the international community.
The Sochi 2014 Olympic logo on the ice
The logo for the Sochi 2014 Olympics was designed by the Interband Agency, the Moscow branch of a Swiss Design Studio. Their design team included eight members from around the world. They created a minimal, futuristic logo that is very different from the Olympic logos of the past. For one, it uses no pictoral symbols in its design apart from the usual five Olympic rings. It is also the first Olympic logo in history to include a web address in its logo – sochi2014.ru. The futuristic letters and numbers of “Sochi” and “2014” are placed on top of each other and they are meant to be a mirror reflection of one another. This symmetrical reflection in the logo is meant to represent Russia’s diverse landscape and how Sochi is the meeting point of the Black Sea and the mountains.
The Sochi 2014 logo was created with the digital age in mind. It is supposed to be futuristic and modern however, personally I feel like it fell a little flat. It was designed with the digital age in mind and the Sochi 2014 Organizing Committee described it as “the first digital brand in the history of the Olympic Movement”. The designers at Interbrand wanted to create a brand logo that appealed to the Internet generation. The logo needed to look good on posters and clothing as well as on tablets and iPhones. These Olympic games weighed heavily on the Internet, and it used this medium to allow people easy access to information and on-going statistics throughout the Olympic games.
Personally, I don’t like the Sochi 2014 logo. It is probably one of my least liked Olympic logos of recent years. I see what the designers were trying to do with respect to their emphasis on digital technology and in this respect, I feel like they did succeed in their outlined task. The logo is very modern and the lettering is indeed very blocky and futuristic looking. However, I do feel like the logo is lacking much overall. The Sochi 2014 logo design does not appeal to me aesthetically and I feel like it is too simple and it just falls flat. I love seeing the pictoral representations included in Olympic logos and I definitely missed that with this logo design.
For your comparison, here are a few examples of Olympic logos used in the past:
2012 Olympics in London
Vancouver 2010 Olympic logo
Beijing 2008 & Torino 2006 logo designs
Another more conventional logo that was proposed for the Sochi 2014 Olympics (pictured below on the left). A Russian studio called Transformer designed it and its uses a more classic Olympic design. It is in sharp contrast to the chosen, official Sochi 2014 logo. What do you think? Do you like it better? Do you think that it would have been a better choice? Let me know your thoughts.
Alternative logo suggestion for the Sochi 2014 logo design