Creative agency iris has unveiled Wenlock (right) and Mandeville, the mascots for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
The two characters are based on blobs of steel used to make the girders for the Olympic stadium, and feature headlights derived from the hire light on London taxis.
Wenlock (above), the mascot of the Olympic Games, is named after the English town of Much Wenlock, which inspired Baron Pierre de Coubertin to found the modern Olympic movement.
Mandeville (above), the mascot of the Paralympics, is named after the town of Stoke Mandeville, the birthplace of the Paralympic Games.
Above: Wenlock. See full-size image here.
Above: Mandeville. See full-size image here.
More Dezeen stories about the London 2012 Olympics:
ArcelorMittal Orbit, a giant sculpture by Anish Kapoor
London 2012 Olympics logo by Wolff Olins
London 2012 Olympics stadium by HOK
Here’s some text about the two characters from the London 2012 website followed by text from iris’ website:
Wenlock
How did I get my name?
My name is inspired by Much Wenlock in Shropshire, a town that is at the heart of Olympic history. In the 19th century, Baron Pierre de Coubertin was invited there to watch the Much Wenlock Games, which were inspired by the Olympic Games of ancient Greece. De Coubertin was inspired by the Much Wenlock Games, too, and went on to found the modern Olympic movement. The Much Wenlock Games are still held to this day!
Mandeville
How did I get my name?
My name is inspired by Stoke Mandeville in Buckinghamshire, the birthplace of the Paralympic Games. On the same day as the Opening Ceremony of the London 1948 Olympic Games, Sir Ludwig Guttmann held his own sport competition in Stoke Mandeville for World War II soldiers with spinal injuries. The Stoke Mandeville Games grew and grew until they became the Paralympic Games.
iris launches the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic mascots
May 19th, 2010
Eighteen months ago the team here at iris pitched against some world-class competition in the advertising industry, as well as some leaders in character design, to win the brief to create the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic mascots.
Tonight, Grant Hunter, the creative director of our London office, unveiled the mascots on the BBC’s The One Show in an interview with Claire Balding.
“Our brief was to create mascots that would excite and inspire young people and encourage them to get involved in sport. We wanted everyone, especially young people, to be able to take part, so we asked ourselves, ‘Why have one mascot when you can have millions?’ ” says Grant.
“To capture people’s imagination you have to create something iconic – something unique – something as individual as you and me. We have created a flexible design that allows you to make the mascot your own, while celebrating what is great about Britain – our heritage, our culture and our creativity. They are inclusive, because they invite everyone to take part and get involved. They aren’t ‘the’ mascots – they are your mascots.”
“The result is a world first – a multi dimensional, adaptable design for the digital age, which will allow you to customise the mascots online later in the year. And who knows what else, after all we’re just at the start of the journey and the possibilities are endless.”
The story of the mascots has been brought to life in a beautifully animated film written by Warhorse author Michael Morpurgo. It tells how ‘Wenlock’ and ‘Mandeville’ – their names derived from locations of historic significance for the Olympics and Paralympics – came to be.
Both mascots are made from a highly reflective steel and in the story we discover that this steel was poured for the final girder of the 2012 stadium, before a grandfather retiring from work that day took them home to carve them into the their unique forms for his grandkids. They’re brought to life by the magic of the rainbow and they set off on a journey across the UK, where their skin reflects all the wonderful things around them, from places to people.
The iris team designed the mascots to reflect sport, as well as London’s cultural icons. They are aerodynamic so they can play sport and they have some subtle design features that remain, no matter what form they take.
Some of the design features include:
-The headlight is the hire light of a hackney carriage – a London icon
-The eye is a camera lens, allowing them to record their journeys
-The Olympic mascot wears the 5 Olympic rings as friendship bands, while the Paralympic mascot wears a personal best wristwatch which also displays the year of the games
-The three peaks on the Olympic mascot were inspired by the 2012 stadium roof, while the Paralympic’s head shape has been inspired by the agitos – the symbol of the paralympic movement
-The colour of the Olympic mascot shimmers through golds, silver and bronzes to reflect the colour of the medals.
Design features of the Olympic mascot
Credits
Grant Hunter, Paul Bainsfair, Rob Leeks, Oskah Manchip, Tony Islam, Susie Hale, Nina Zimmermann, Hannah Worthington, Andy Pilkington, Keith Franczak, Carl Addy, Rebecca Cox and Dan Doherty.
See also:
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| Sculpture for Olympic Park by Anish Kapoor |
London 2012 Olympics logo by Wolff Olins |
The Blue Fence Project by StudioSuperniche |
I wish this were a joke. Does anyone remember that horrible mascot the Atlanta games had?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izzy_(mascot)
http://www.virginmedia.com/images/izzy-atlanta-260×380.gif
This feels like the 2012 version of that.
How did this happen, in London of all places, that such consistently horrible design has been produced for an olympics?
horrible!
Ban illegal drugs for olympic committee members too!
Oh dear…
cute
wow its so cute………
first: the logo; after that: the “scultpture” from kapoor. and now……this ??? someone over there is not doing a great job
I want to cry…
Shaped well and designed from very positive principles that capture energy and movement but gone way wrong in the eye department. As any Japanese child or adult will tell you-and as research has shown-drawn cartoon and animation characters with big, shiny, black pupils are very kawaii (cute). I would have thought that that was elemental in Mascot Design 101. And why only one eye??? A camera lens? Surely the new government’s belt-tightening does not extend to rationing of eyes on Olympic mascots!! Mythology tells us: one eye=maleovolent. And don’t get me started on “one-eyed monster” jokes… Check the next issue of Viz and see if I am wrong..
They look like bottle openers…London boozers will like them.
They seem to have come under a lot of criticism but I think they should be commended for their originiality.
It would have been easy to stick some arms on big ben and call it a day but I reckon there has been a fair amount of effort in trying to create something unique and memorable for 2012
Think you need to look at 1996 Olympic mascot! Originality is definitely somethings this design lacks!!
Another case of design by committee and focus groups, the ODA should be congratulated on delivering yet another terrible design in line with the logo. This is what happens when an Ad agency rather than a designer is appointed, focus groups, market feedback, flip charts, more focus groups etc etc result …. rubbish. Well done Iris.
The faces remind me of screens, which just gos to show how socilay messed up we are today. That is all these mascots say to me.
very original! come one guys, do we want to see another safe and crowd-pleasing mascot…? its 2012 for heaven’s sake, be different!
I still think Vicky Pollard would do a great Mascot.
Could you imagine! That would be so great!!!
i saw photo of these yesterday – my immediate reaction was, oh no, sooooo computer generated…………( from info above though seem to be some nice concepts and things , i do think they are visually improved by overall pattern, not sure why, maybe something as simple as the flag design gives them something more that people can visually identify with, havn’t seen past Olympic games mascots to compare, were they designed with hosting countries flag on ? ……………. may be they are better in animation? not sure,
I think Pat is onto something with the single eye representing a camera. A symbol to remind everyone in London (the most cctv in any city ) “you are on camera”.
These are not original at all, these are truly horrible done by artists who do not understand cartooning. The last successful Olympic mascot was Javier Mariscal’s Cobi for Barcelona. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why, he’s a cartoonist. Hire cartoonists not illustrators. The great claim at the time for Whatizit, the Atlanta Olympic mascot was that he was done on a computer and I think it was the worst mascot ever. Do they pick these based on the trendiness of the rendering programs?
They look like the carphone warehouse mascot mixed with the Shanghai expo mascot. I can sense market research.
mmmmm lame, they could have come up with somthing a bit more IDENTIFIABLE, i think they are way to digital and that they look safely like NOTHING, bloob-crappy alien with the taxi headlight?
which by the way, taxis have headlights allover the world, not just in England. The only good thing are their names in my opinion.
Brilliant. I love ‘em. Such cool names too. Look out for loads of kids called Wenlock & Mandeville starting school in about 3 years time! Brilliant work IRIS. And although I never thought it would happen, Wolff Ollin’s work for the identity has grown on me too.
Great to see London pushing the boundaries a bit and not “playing safe”.
Are we sure these were not secretly designed by Zaha?
In all fairness, it could have been much worse. Usually you have to get in a person to animate the bloody thing so the basic principles are rather limited anyway. Also I quite like the metallic colours and even the monocle thing.
just been reading – http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/may/19/london-olympics-2012-mascot, and have also just remembered “the flumps” & “babba pappa” – if im remembering correctly, both cartoons were just kind of shapes, didn’t remotely look like anything but were really good, so maybe these will be ok – could they be the flumps athletic forward thinking friends?
So… the UK made fun of the Canadian mascots at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver? You gotta be kidding!!
@Wenlock and Mandeville:
Stick some arms on Big Ben….. Why not?
It’s also about execution, not just concept.
You can have a mascot with no face but just a clock face, and perhaps the time of the clock can be animated as if they were athletes. Who knows? Or maybe silkscreen the photo of Big Ben instead of trying to make it all cute and cuddly. Who says mascots need to be curvy, soft and have small feet?
These mascots are great examples of how poor execution can fail a maybe-interesting concept.
I’d rather hire Banksy to do a mascot. And I’m sure he’s doing it already.
oh my god!!!!!
i seriously doubt whether children will like these two one-eye mascots.
I the context of Olympic Mascots these actually have some design integrity. Can’t image the number of hoops these would have had to jump through…good work in a difficult arena.
…that ’2012′ logo on the other hand…
I think the little ‘m’ and ‘w’ stand for ‘man’ and ‘whatever’…
I seriously think these are propper cool. Yes, “propper” cool. In the words of da “kidz” on da street. “these fings are wicked mate”. I must say the concepts are rather wonderfull and take from a range of notions that makes britain…well, british.
Its often the big talk, whats “british”, what make makes us….us? And for this, I like everyone else, has no answer. But i do believe taking iconic pieces of the make-up of britiain and turning that into a mascott is a marvellous, and rather playful idea.
Its a little like architecture. The little mascotts look pretty funky and fun, bit shinny new, a little bit wicked, and for all those that are interested, it has a story to tell, it has more behind it then just slapping “arms on big ben”.
omg what i can see on his arm instead of a computer is a “power-balance”-armlace.
hocus pocus.
Big Brother as an Olympic mascot, I am a fan of the logo, but these leave me confused
@Pak-Kei:
“Stick some arms on Big Ben….. Why not?”
I’m not sure if this would be a better design then… ;)
These guys are crazy, but they are unique and have character.
@yshin:
“i seriously doubt whether children will like these two one-eye mascots.”
YOU doubt, are YOU a kid? ;) Check out the latest toys and you will see, that there’s a lot of crazy stuff going on…
@all:
all the bashing here, and so many people who know what is good or even better, – then just do it better.
Keep in mind that the games will be held in 2012, so maybe this style is 2 years ahead… ;)
The logo has grown on me a great deal, despite my initial negativity, so I ought to be cautious handling these designs. I like some aspects but I’m underwhelmed and lacking something elemental to latch onto. The characters are tertiary and ambiguous, making them harder to copy and easier to protect as a product. Many of their assigned qualities are not reproducible in soft toy form, though I imagine this is a conscious departure. I’m confused by the idea of a customizable mascot, seems somewhat paradoxical, a mascot being easily identified, reproduced etc., custom implies one off, but I sympathize with the demands of contemporary media and think this could provide some sense of ownership. The ability to possess/grasp a mascot/character mentally is important in it’s reception.
The naming (incidentally one of the most pleasing aspects) suggests the level of research that has gone into these designs but I wonder how much, if anything, they communicate independent of supporting text. Ultimately I see the complex result of a complex process… A complex logo, applied to a complex character, a Droste effect of complexity if you will. Perhaps too many good intentions become lost in the final product. It’s a tough brief and I’m curious to see how they are utilized as this too is critical.
I think these characters already have some experience as extras in Avatar and Monsters Inc.
Hi,
We are an industrial design studio from Barcelona TRIADISSENY. This is the mascot that we would have liked to offer to you, but unfortunately we couldn’t. As you will see, in our web site: http://www.triadisseny.cat, it is the Cheshire Cat, we thought that it was a traditional English icon. We designed a mascot that went together with the Logo, this was our intention.
It is a pity but we couldn’t register for the competition, in our opinion, the rules were intended for big companies, we tried to contact some companies but we didn’t receive any response.
On the other hand, it seemed reasonable that the company to win the contest had to be English and, for us, compete would mean a great effort without much hope.
By the way, we designed the mascot of the 2008 International Expo, where the theme was the water.
Anyways, we want to show you what we have done and we hope you like it.
They make me uncomfortable, I don’t find them endearing at all. And I also cannot envision that they will be very versatile. A mascot must work in many very different mediums, and frankly… these won’t. The suggestion that the one eye will make a good bottle opener is perhaps their only redeeming quality.
Cheesy as expected.
The shapes and colours will work well with the titles from ‘You’ve Been Framed’ on ITV. The cartoon characters express only the passive hedonsim of our current times. In a word – dumb. Could they have not found anything better?
I was waiting for the truly disgusting 2012 logo to grow on me, or at least to become socially relevent, but after a few years this still hasn’t happened.
(and are they really going to make the Kapoor sculpture? I’m pretty sure it’s a joke.)
Taking the 2012 logo, the Kapoor Kraptower and now this, it all does smack of a desperation for trendy, cool, avant garde originality, to wow the (international ) crowd. Each one fails because they seem to have that premise as a starting point rather than examining how each – as a piece of crafted design – could be exemplars of concepts that not only meet classic design principles but extend them through imagination and innovation. In all these instances true imagination has been left behind as bravura and visual idiocy is allowed to run amock.
this is sooooo, wrong :)))) … I sort of got the logo thing.. but this… way behind any normality …. Zaha !? was that you ? … I hope not… :))
Oh Lord….
All I can think about when I see this is Kang and Kodos from the Simpsons’ Halloween Specials
Just a bit “one-eyed” perhaps two would give them the look that people are looking for d;-)
my god, they are truly terrible
I dont completely hate these as mascots, They have a Monsters Inc style to them which is pretty popular, however they do not make me think of Britain, which is the problem I’ve been having with the entirity of the London 2012 build up. These Olympics are having a complete identity crisis, 80′s logo, pixar style blobby mascots, and a ridiculous steel sculpture which looks like a scrapheap gone wrong.
The UK needs to seriously consider what it is, what the rest of the world thinks i is and what it wants the rest of the world to think it is.
We are good at kitsch and handmade, William Morris and 70′s wallpaper, london buses and black taxis, big ben, chavs, indie kids, self deprication, that is what the UK is and does, they shouldn’t be trying to be glitzy because they aren’t good at it, be honest and willing to laugh at ourselves rather than trying to out-do Beijing, just be British!
Give the olympic committee job to Blue Peter and Monty Python
They should have used Paddington Bear instead.
Why does the olympic committee feel the need to require host cities to design these assinine characters every time that inevitably look like a blob of poo? So useless.
I don't think they even deserve a comment.
Im not even going to ask…
haha…i thought that after the initial reaction, there would have been a reconsideration of the mascots…but seeing as how the organizing committee has kept the logo after its disastrous reception, no one ought to be surprised!
Pyramids, One Eye, ZION, Strange Metal Buildings, Pyramid shaped lights….
The Anti-Christ is Here & You have just been warned.