Wenlock and Mandeville - The Designers Meeting

Bill Barol at Boing Boing isn't so sure about the Fast Company's theory - that the best Olympics have the worst mascots and therefore Mandeville and Wenlock inevitablty mean London 2012 will be "awesome". Then again, the Fast Company also call the London organisers the "owners of what may be the most widely panned logo in history".

Anyway, I thought the following from Adrian Chen at The Gawker, on how the designers might have come up with the idea for London's genetically mutated Teletubbies, is just brilliant:

5:38pm January 12th, 2010: T— Design Studio, London

DESIGNER ONE: OK, we need to design the mascots for the 2012 Olympics.

DESIGNER TWO: But I'm tired!

DESIGNER ONE: Here, we'll make it easy. We can just reuse the pattern for the walking penises we made for the London SEXpo.

DESIGNER TWO: Great! Should they have fingers? Or creepy stub-like claw things?

DESIGNER ONE: Stub-like claws. Fingers are really hard to do.

DESIGNER TWO: I think their trademark gesture should be the "sieg heil".

DESIGNER ONE: Definitely. They should walk around and just do the sieg heil everywhere.

DESIGNER TWO: I still can't believe that London chose a neo-Nazi design firm like us to make their Olympics mascot.

DESIGNER ONE: We've got some extra blue fabric. What should we do with it?

DESIGNER TWO: Well, one of the key principles of mascot design is to draw attention to the crotch. So let's put it there.

DESIGNER ONE: OK, all done. Let's go get drunk.

DESIGNER TWO: We're already drunk.

DESIGNER ONE: Oh, yeah.