The London 2012 Olympic Logo

In case you haven’t heard, the 2012 summer Olympic games will be held in London, England. The interesting news is that on Monday, they released the logo for the games. The jigsaw-style logo is made up of four jagged pieces that form “2012″ in a series of colours, and was meant to engage people with a dynamic, modern and moving style, organizers said. “I wouldn’t pay a penny for such a catastrophic mistake,” said Ken Livingstone, mayor of London, questioning why organizers would ask for such a design. Keep in mind they paid $841,775 for the design.

You can pretty much picture anything you want when you look at it; however, you do have to admit that it looks a lot like Lisa Simpson doing things to Milhouse (original link). Use your imagination:

Well that’s funny and all, but the best part comes later. The BBC then puts up a gallery of user submitted alternate logos. The end result? The BBC gets Goatse’d on live tv and their website! The logo is shown to the left.

My favorite part is the explanation that went with the logo on the website: Sean Stayte, “Here is my design for the Olympic logo. It is very simple and so memorable. The hands represent Britain pulling together to reveal the Olympics.” Simply hillarious.

Here is the clip of it being shown on TV. You have to watch it just for the music:

And that’s it right? Not with this story. Today television commercials using the logo had to be pulled over epilepsy fears! CBC has a good story on it here. Here’s the info:

While the logo itself does not pose a health hazard, 18 people have reported having epileptic seizures after viewing the animated footage. A section depicting a diver plunging into a pool that has a multicoloured rippled effect triggered the most complaints. “I’m really shocked,” said Simon Wigglesworth of Epilepsy Action, a British health charity. “They know flashing lights can cause problems.”

The footage failed a test used to measure whether photosensitivity levels in animated TV footage are safe for people with epilepsy, said Prof. Graham Harding, an expert in clinical neurophysiology who developed the test. “It fails the Harding FPA machine test, which is the machine the television industry uses to test images,” Harding told the BBC. “And so it does not comply with Ofcom guidelines and is in contravention of them.”