London 2012 logo launched

So it begins.

We're going to be seeing a heck of a lot of the new London 2012 Olympics logo that has just been launched.

It's been designed by branding behemoths Wolff Olins, with a design brief that called for an emblem that "represented the four key 'brand pillars' of access, participation, stimulation and inspriation, culminating in the brand vision of Everyone's Games."

It's going to be popping up all over the place, in four colours: pink, blue, green and orange. And we use that word pop intentionally – the logo has a very 80s pop feel to it, which is oh-so-hip right now, or was a few weeks ago – who can keep up? So it runs the risk of feeling a little off by 2012, although with the constant and ever-decreasing recycling of cultural trends we might well be in another 80s revival by then.

It immediately made us think of Smash Hits magazine, and also the cover of Queen's A kind of Magic, with perhaps a hint of ZZ Top too?

And now that we come to think of it, there's a bit of Matisse's The Snail in there too.

It's quite a departure from the softer, hand drawn logos that have been created for recent Olympics, including 2008's Beijing Olympics – which mimics the Chinese character "wen" meaning humanity, or culture. This site has a full selection for the completists amongst you.

We're expecting avalanches of vitriol and disgust to cascade across the design blogs on this one, as tends to happen with any big logo launch. The Guardian sports blog is already getting busy.

But what do you think? Chuck us a comment just below.