Official Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games Logo

The presentation of logo on the Red Square wasn’t canceled after all! The live coverage was, and the press conference where the new logo will be presented to the World was move to today, Tuesday December 1st (11am Moscow time). But the concert and presentation did go ahead. And the Official Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games Logo is what was leaked earlier – text “sochi.ru 2014”. Here are a couple of pictures from the event:

Source: nl.livejournal.com, you can find more photos from the concert there.

I guess now we just have to wait for a mascot. Bear.ru ? :o)

update: yet more photos are available here.

update 2: Sochi2014.com design has been updated fir the new brand. Official explanation of the logo: Read the rest of this entry »

Olympic logo presentation was moved to Tuesday due to the tragedy on railroad between Moscow and St.-Petersburg.

upd: This is today, from the Red Square:

source

Officially will be presented tomorrow, December 1 at 11am Moscow Time ( 8am GMT ) at a press conference with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in Moscow.

I feel fairly certain, that the following is a real official Olympic logo for the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games that will be presented this upcoming Monday.

That’s right, it’s what you see – “sochi.ru 2014” painted with color of the Russian flag, plus the Olympic rings. Stop for a moment before reading further and look at it: how do you feel about it? Do you like it?

Why I think this is it? I might still be wrong about this, but a few things here and there come together:

• Comments from officials how this will be unlike anything before
• The “explanation” comments that came with the leak (read on), and how they sounded in line with everything that government is doing while spending a lot of money of various project in Russia, not just the Olympics
• The fact that Russian Olympic committee took over sochi.ru domain name
• Unofficial confirmation from a person I believe is closely involved with organizers of Sochi 2014 Games

For some time now officials hinted that we’ll see something new, exciting and modern. And on November 25th, five days before the logo officially announced, Russian «Vedomosty» newspaper leaked this blurry photo of the logo. According to the article the point of this design is to promote Sochi, Russia and to tie Sochi to Russia in people’s mind. Love it or hate it you’ll probably agree that this design will probably help to reach this goal. In addition, from personal experience, many people in Eastern European – Poles, Slovaks, and Czechs I’ve talked to – who know about Sochi, think it is part of Georgia, which has never been the case. This idea of using even logo to “advertise” Russia goes along the line with the government’s position of getting the most out of money they’ve spend, and with spending a lot of money in recent years to improve the view of Russia in the world (like English language news channel, the use of top branding agencies, etc. – things that many other developed countries do, to be fair).

Another thing that will be unique about the logo is that the official sponsors will be allowed to use their corporate colors on the logotype.

Vedomosti sources claim the logo design is by Interbrand (here’s their Imagining the new Russia article), and no certain info on compensation for logo design. Though they quote design experts putting the price tag in the $600 000 – $1 000 000 million range.

So, what do you say – good? bad? How do you like it?

And what do you think they should do to Sochi.ru domain name after the Olympics?

Previous articles on this topic:

• New Sochi 2014 logotype coming soon
• Sochi.ru domain mysteriously transferred to Sochi 2014 officials
• Selecting mascot for Sochi Olympics!
• «Olympics» tag on this blog

The word out is Sochi 2014 logo is scheduled to be unveiled in the great deal of pomposity on November 30 in Moscow – the Red Square, a concert, etc.

Lenta.ru, Russia’s largest online news site, picked up on a blog post today, with another version of the logo. I don’t know why they started the speculation that this is the logotype that will be presented in Moscow next week, I don’t see where these rumors come from (upd: there’s a photo circulating online of this logo being presented somewhere). In any event, it’s pretty, so here it is for your viewing pleasure:

There are a few things you need to know in order to understand importance of this piece of news:

• Main highway connecting Sochi to Moscow (or Moscow to Sochi, if you like) is federal highway M-4, aka «Don» highway
• «There are only two problems in Russia: fools and roads» – this common Russian saying should tell you something about the overall state of roads in Russia
• Recently, a law regulating pay roads in Russia has been passed, and State corporation established with intent to improve federal roads.

The «Don» highway crosses several regions in Russia: somewhere road pavement is good, somewhere it’s ok, but in Voronezh and Rostov regions it’s pretty bad. It’s so bad, in fact, that the part of the highway going through Rostov region is considered one of the most dangerous roads in the country (I’ll talk about this a little in one of the next posts). Several years ago, driving from St.-Petersburg to Sochi we witnessed five accidents with fatalities, four of which were on «Don», and all four between Voronezh and Rostov-on-Don. That’s only within two days. The latest trip I took on that road was this summer, in August, and it wasn’t that bad this time (no fatal accidents around, anyways), still the road is very bad in some regions.

One thing always surprises me on these trips, though, is Read the rest of this entry »