This fails to mention the other point about that logo.<p>Once you have seen Lisa Simpson on her knees, to the right, satisfying a man on the left, you cannot 'unsee' it.
I can't speak for the others, but the Vancouver logo was representative of a totem as a fair bit of the brand of the Vancouver Olympics was celebrating various Canadian native communities.<p>I think the real upset is that the others are simple, but professional. IMO this one looks more like a bunch of cut out pieces of construction paper or a little more like grunge/graffiti. Maybe I'm missing a deeper meaning to the logo, but I think that a lot of people are if there is one.
I agree that the London Olympics logo is merely typically bad, rather than unusually bad. So the question is: why are Olympic logos always so bad? I suppose it's just a matter of having too many people involved.<p>What's really interesting is that the logo for the <i>bid</i> is almost always much better than the logo for the actual games; for instance all the logos of the bidding cities for 2012:<p><a href="http://logoblink.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/olympic-logos.png" rel="nofollow">http://logoblink.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/olympic-logo...</a><p>are actually pretty good.<p>Another example: Sydney 2000. If you look up the logo of the bid, it's pretty attractive, just the outline of the Sydney Opera House in the Olympic colours. But by the time they created a logo for the actual games, they took that logo, reversed it, and added some boomerangs (gotta get an Aboriginal influence in there!) plus a picture of a running man (sorry, person) in order to get something entirely too complicated and just plain ugly.
The logo is pants, but have you seen the mascots? I'm not even going to find a link they're so excruciatingly excremental.<p>Personally, I loved Vancouver's, but think Barcelona's a work of genius; joy and athleticism in two brush strokes and a blob. Maravillosa.