Top 5 Olympic Mascots

So, today marks exactly 2 years until the next Olympic Games which will be held by London, home of myhomepage! London 2012 is everywhere today - in all the newspapers and on the television. Lots of people are talking about and television channels are having special broadcasts from the new Olympic venue which is currently being built. I've driven past the site a few times and seen the stadium getting built. It does look very impressive! It's very round and seems quite small but I'm sure it will look amazing!

This got me thinking to the Olympic mascots - quickly becoming an integral part of the Olympic games. Have a good mascot and people will definitely notice it and pay it attention. I think a lot of companies, organizations, corporations and individuals often over look the humble mascot. Perhaps it is an old fashioned marketing idea and we are much more focused now on ubiquitus logo design, but I definitely appreciate a mascot. I think the West has moved on from the mascot but in the East, mascots are still plentiful - especially in Japan where cute characters are an integral part of a company's identity.

Mascot design is an artform in itself. As with all marketing, you have to think of the audience and the message. Mascots for different age groups or cultures should be designed different. Mascots are not just a cute way to appeal to children, they can sometimes say more about your company than website and/or logo design. They can have a voice and distinct personality that can present your company personality more accurately than through other marketing avenues. Designing the Olympic mascots must be a hard challenge as they are supposed to appeal to all men and women both young and old from all the countries around the world!

Without further adieu, here are my top 5 Olympic Mascots!

5. Sam (Los Angeles 1984)


Sam is a very fun mascot! Full of the anthropomorphologicalism that we would expect from a Disney designed character, Sam represents the US on so many levels. He invokes patriotism and kitch Americana without being too comical.

4. Hodori (Seoul 1988)


Hodori is a very cute tiger mascot from Korea. I really like this mascot because he has lots of charm and really embodies what the Olympics are about. He's competitive and eager to win but respectful! I don't think he's the best mascot though because there is very little of Korean culture in the design. He could be a tiger from anywhere - does Korea even have wild tigers? I like to think the mascots often represent some kind of the host city's/nation's culture that you can teach to the world.

3. Cobi (Barcelona 1992)


Cobi is the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. He's different from the other mascots in that he sometimes wears a suit! Genius! He's based on a Catalan sheepdog and his design is inspired by Picasso's cubist paintings. There's so much culture and history in this design that makes it really interesting.

2. Wenlock and Mandeville (London 2012)


Wenlock and Mandeville are curious characters - they are apparently drops of steel incorporating subtle hints to the Olympics and Paraolympics and London. They are named after Much Wenlock - a town in the UK that hosted a games said to have inspired the modern Olympic movement - and Stock Mandeville - a hospital which was the birthplace of the Paraolympics. Their design incorporates London black taxis, the Olympic rings and cameras. Why cameras? I have no idea! But overall, I like the designs and I really like the small history lesson we get!

1. Fuwa (Beijing 2008)


There were 5 mascots the Beijing Olympics - I can't think of Games that had as many mascots! They are called Beibei, Jingjing, Huanhuan, Yingying and Nini. Their names from the phrase: 'Beijing Huanying Ni' which translates as 'Beijing Welcomes You' (repeating a word for a name is considered diminutive). Each mascot is a different color of one of the five rings and each are infused with a lot of Chinese symbolism. Granted, a lot of people will not know what the designs symbolise but I think overally these are my favourite mascots. They are cute and each one has a distinct personality which means they appeal to lots of different people whilst also reflecting the ideas behind the Olympic games.

I hope you enjoyed this short look at the Olympic mascots and mascot design in general. I could never design a mascot but I do think a well designed mascot really makes a difference!

5 Inspirational Blog Designs

Digital design is something that I really enjoy. I've been ssaving gifs and jpegs for well over ten years now. I first started in PaintShop Pro before moving onto Photoshop which has been my program of choice ever since. As with anything, digital design has seen various trends come and go. The specific online communities I was a part of had their own design trends as well. Prolific use of boxes and squares, juxtapositions of medieval typefaces with brushes of swirls and stars and vectors were all strong fashionable phases for a while. Of course, different online communities had different trends and it was always interesting for me to visit websites of different interests and see how tastes and identities differed.

Check out these inspirational blog designs which I think are practical and beautiful (ultimately the two key goals for designing a blog).

1. N.Design Studio



I think this blog design is exquisite. Toronto based Nick La's careful choice of peach with the vibrant purples and blues make for beautiful design that takes inspiration from Asian art whilst carefully giving it a modern design twist. The koi fish is brilliantly juxtaposed with the title. When I first saw this design, it really changed my idea of what a blog design should be like. I especially like how organic the design is, yet it is coupled with a serif font which gives it a more controlled, authorative contrast.

2. Blog.SpoonGraphics



Chris Spooner hails from the UK and has a really nice design for his blog. It's less organic than the previous one and has more vector shapes but again, it features textured patterns and has hand-drawn elements. I particularly like designs that have this natural feel to them, that haven't necessarily been created in two seconds in Photoshop or can easily be replicated by someone else. The choice of browns and natural colors is a brave one but I think it works well. Ultimately it's different from a lot of other blogs by having a muted palette. However, this blog really shines for all the fun, free tutorials Chris offers!



3. Douglas Menezes' Blog

This design (from Brazilian graphic designer Douglas Menezes), is all about color and shape. But mostly color. I have a love/relationship with color. To be honest, I feel my color knowledge in digital design is probably my weakest skill. I don't think I always pick the best colors or palettes for digital work which often makes my designs falter. Douglas' design picks up color and goes running with it full steam ahead! The vibrant hues of fuschia and turquoise go extremely well together. The bold graphic at the top is then highlighted with color accents in the content. Similarly, the design is held together with personal illustrations and some more clever use of texture that compliments, not subtracts, the overall design.



4. ilovecolors

ilovecolors is a brilliant blog from Elio based in Argentina. Unlike the other blogs in this list, his design is quite dark yet is highlighted well with strong, high-contrast colors. It has similar design elements to others in this list, textured backgrounds with organic forms. I think this blog shows how you can take a design theme with similar elements but subtle changes can really make it stand out.



5. BestBlogBox

BestBlogBox is owned by Linda (also from Brazil) and it shows a softer side to design. The misty pinks, purples and golds make for a very pretty layout but it is complimented well with a myriad of other elements (pencils, pens, flowers, html code etc.). This design has great depth and there are elements that you don't see the first time you visit the blog. A very clever piece of art that reveals more as you look at it for longer.

In conclusion I think there is a definite trend in the design world for contrasts and juxtapositions. The nude, natural colors contrasted with bright, vidid shades. Similarly, texture is playing a huge part in design. It wasn't that long ago that a lot of things were designed with simplicity and cleaness (although these are still very popular trends). At the end of the day, the blogs I have listed here are very small example of the world of blog designs and you will find countless well design blogs which will very different

Top 5 Blogging Tips - Tips for Writing a Good Blog

I've been writing a blog for many years now. In my free time I write my own personal blog that focuses mainly on Korean, Japanese and Chinese pop music; before that I had many personal blogs going back 10 years and I also write the myhomepage blog. To be honest, I'm not a pro-blogger and I don't get paid to write blog posts but hopefully I've learnt a few things that you might be able to find useful.

1 - Know Your Niche

This is the fundamental rule I try to stick to. Know your niche. Magazines are split up into different genres - sports, digital design, women's interest, men's interest, children's, puzzlers and so on. Your blog should be no different. If you don't have a coherent blog identity then your readers will be slightly disorientated if they've navigated to your blog on a film you've reviewed only to find you then talking about your car. Personal blogs are exempt from this as they're more like diaries. But I strongly suggest picking a topic you're interested in and sticking to it. You'll find that your blog can pick up a lot of traffic with a lot of keywords in the same topic once it gets indexed by Google and other search engines.

2 - Express Your Personality

One thing that a good writer does is to stand out from the crowd. Being able to show your personality in what you write is important and will keep people coming back to your blog (obviously it might also annoy them but you can't win over everyone). To do this is hard, because we're often used to reading very straight and unbiased writing in news. But never forget to express yourself within your writing - after all the blog is just very much a reflection on you.

3 - Write Interesting Articles

This is another important one. Often I'll find blogs that are just videos or images but with no text or explanation. This can sometimes work great if you're going for a really visual statement - but it can also be difficult to pick up traction because people simply don't want to spend time trying to figure out the point of your post. I've found that the more indepth an article is, the higher chance people will read it and stick around. I've posted a lot of short posts before but they never work as well as longer posts because in the shorter ones, you aren't offering anything different than what your reader could find from a news aggrigrator.

4 - Include Multimedia

This is a simple one and it doesn't always hold true. But if you have atleast one interesting image or video file in your post - it greatly helps your reader understand what your blog post is going to be about. If you're blogging as a personal diary, again, that's different.

5 - Network

This is another important point. Just like how businesses grow through friends and connections, you can see a great improvement to your web traffic if you start networking around. Commenting on other people's blogs, writing to them, exhcanging links. Although this can be daunting and you might be fearful of rejection - most bloggers actually really enjoy getting contacted and love it when they get emails. Plus, exchanging links means that you'll get an improved ranking by Google which will help with your search engine results.

In conclusion, I really enjoy writing blogs - I wouldn't have kept one of some form for over a decade if I didn't. Ultimately I keep a blog because I enjoy writing, but it's more than that. If I just enjoyed writing then I'd keep a diary or write a novels and essays. Blogs allow you to interact with others. The internet facilitates, and actively encourages, reader/author communication. Most blog platforms have an option for readers to post comments easily opening up channels of communication unlike traditional print media. It's this interaction that I enjoy the most. I've gotten to know a lot of nice people through blogging and without this interaction I think blogging would be less engaging.

Image credited to Annie Mole at flickr.