1976 Olympic logo design

We nipped across to Radio Days (careful, the site's got tunes) in Waterloo earlier today, which is one of our favourite shops in London, with a fantastic collection of vintage clothing, collectables and memorabilia, from the 1920s to the 1970s. (Actually, the whole of Lower Marsh Street is pretty groovy.)

Anyway, we picked up an old copy of Design Magazine from January 1975, and its feature article was all about the design of the Montreal 1976 Olympic Games logo. It makes for pretty interesting reading 32 years later, especially with all the hoo-ha about the London 2012 logo.

Apparently the logo represents a podium, a running track, and a letter M for Montreal. Podium: yep, we're with you. Running track: um, a bit. M for Montreal: not so much, what with an M having two humps, not three.*

Since we're feeling generous, you can read all about the logo's development, as we've scanned the whole article for you. Check it out right here.

And if that doesn't sate your Canadian design lust, read more here.

*UPDATE
A very clever, and very Canadian, friend of ours has pointed out the following: "I think it probably depends on what you regard as most salient, humps or sticks. 'm' has 3 sticks and 'n' has 2. In many manual alphabets, for example both the two-handed British Manual Alphabet and the one-handed American Manual alphabet, 'm' is represented by a 3-finger configuration and 'n' by a 2-finger configuration. So for some people, it's sticks not humps that count. Of course, it's easier to use fingers to represent sticks than humps..."

And once you look at it like that, it makes a whole heck more sense.

Comments

[Caspian]

Thanks for sharing this. A good find and a great read.

[Colin McKay]

Fantastic! And if you want to gorge yourself on more Montreal '76 material, the CBC has a site on it:

http://archives.cbc.ca/IDD-1-41-1316/sports/montreal_olympic_games/

Including video of sweet little Nadia Comaneci winning those straight 10s!