I saw a curious, full-page ad for Adam & Company in a recent issue of the thick quarterly New American Paintings. I say it was curious because it consisted of a richly layered, digital illustration/photo mash-up and the name “Adam & Company,” and nothing more. There were no enormous logos or taglines. No product callouts. Just the name, and a wonderful image. So what did I do: exactly what marketing directors world over think people won’t do. I went to their website.

Adam & Company is run by Adam Larson, and is based out of Boston, Massachusetts. Maybe I’ve had my head in a hole, but I hadn’t heard of him, and when the first portfolio images parsed onto my screen I was shocked… This stuff is really good. And it’s hard to describe too… Everything from excitingly contemporary, super-minimal logos to lavish digital illustrations. No matter what you’re looking at, everything seems so fresh.

See more here.

For the header of this page, I used the above projection to trace and ink. You can see where I kept having to make it smaller and smaller… the first few would have produced sketches too big to fit in the scanner. After a few unsuccessful attempts, I threw a bunch of them on the page at once in decreasing increments. Second from the bottom was the winner.

The new logo for the Olympic games to be held in London has caused quite a controversy. It is sad that every time graphic design appears in the news it is always a torch-mob level event, with a whole community furious at how much money was spent to create something “bad.” Of course, that’s how the news works: bad news makes money, but most areas of interest find ways to make the news in good ways too.

Design Observer has a great article and comment thread about this topic, you can read it here. My comments on the subject are below:

I cringed when I saw this logo too. But now, a couple days later, I can say that I don’t hate it, though I’m not sure if I can say that I like it. In other words, it is starting to grow on me a bit. Regardless, there are some composition elements, such as the weird square in the middle and the small “London,” that are really bugging me. Why couldn’t “London” have been pulled out of the typography of the “2012″?

But here’s the thing: In the past Olympic logos have often been stale and completely boring. We can all agree that this logo does not fall into that category. What have the past logos done to push the Olympic brand forward? I think that, for the most part, they have just maintained the status quo (the Chicago torch logo proposed by VSA was pretty good, but look what happened to it).

So, even though I’m not sold on this logo, I want to point out the things I like about it:

I am thrilled by the fact that no city landmarks were included. We all know that Paris has an Eiffel Tower, London has Big Ben, Chicago has the Sears Tower, NY has the statue of Liberty, etc. These landmarks are included in every tourist pamphlet, logo and website. Therefore, please spare me the municipal cliches and show me something different.

This logo is reaching out to the Under-30 audience. Most of the Olympic Games’ established audience will watch every 4 years regardless of the logo. They are already sold, and no logo is needed to “sell ‘em more.” Young people, however, finally get to see a logo that relates to their tastes and aesthetics.

Randomness and chaos are not just visual fads: they have become an essential part of the internet generation’s thinking. That is why there are thousands of popular websites full of nothing but utter chaos: You’re The Man Now Dog, Youtube, WTF CNN, etc. The random, the unexpected, the childishly silly: these things are practically worshipped by the new generation. This logo reflects those values and attempts, in a very tongue-in-cheek/self-concious way, to say that the Olympic games are full of life and drama, not just stale sporting events for Mom and Dad.

The best example of this is the commercial that depicted a diver (the one that was pulled off air). For many people, diving is pretty boring. Someone jumps into a pool while a panel of judges nit pick their form. But in the commercial, bright colors undulate over the diver, who then jumps into a pool of pure, seizure-inducing psychadelia. It is okay to laugh here: this is tongue in cheek… and though I, like most people, will never sit down for an hour and watch a diving competition, I will always remember that image, and I am now more aware of diving.

The logo has its ups and downs, but hopefully future designers, because of this new precedent, won’t feel inclined to repeat, yet again, the old Olympic logo traditions.