The London 2012 Games were centred around the Olympic Park in east London, which is the site of a number of new sports venues. Up to 180,000 spectators a day entered the Park to enjoy the Games, making it the principal focus of Olympic activity.

The main venues – the Olympic Stadium, Aquatics Centre, Velodrome and BMX Circuit, as well as the hockey, handball and basketball arenas – were easily accessible through a network of footbridges and walkways within the Park.

The Olympic Village was within walking distance of all the venues in the Park, enhancing the experience for athletes and officials. The use of other prestigious venues – such as Wembley Stadium for football, the All-England Club in Wimbledon for tennis, Lord’s Cricket Ground for archery and Horse Guards Parade for beach volleyball – was also a feature of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

London Olympic emblem was made by Chairman Brian Boylan and Ije Nwokorie, managing director at Wolff Olins London.

IN: It is, probably more than ever before, an international, multicultural, creative, modern, energetic, and therefore dissonant city. We wanted to show something you could bump into on the street–using that language–as opposed to something that felt “official.”

BB: The mark itself came from an energy grid we drew of lines that moved around, contained within a rectangle, which we stopped at one particular moment. This was used in a very random way to create a pattern, so this idea of freeform is right at the heart of the brand. The typeface very much links back to that. We never recommended anything with horizontals or verticals–it was always slightly to one side, to make people look at this thing and think twice. We used the term “prescribed anarchy”–it wasn’t [that] we just wanted to draw something spiky.

Wenlock

Wenlock takes his name from the town of Much Wenlock in Shropshire, which still hosts the traditional Much Wenlock Games. These were one of Pierre de Coubertin's sources of inspiration for the modern Olympic Games.

According to the story by Michael Morpurgo, Wenlock's metallic look is explained by the fact that he was made from one of the last drops of steel used to build the Olympic Stadium in London. The light on his head is based on those found on London's famous black cabs. The shape of his forehead is identical to that of the Olympic Stadium roof. His eye is the lens of a camera, filming everything he sees. On his wrists, he wears five bracelets in the colours of the Olympic rings. And the three points on his head represent the three places on the podium for the medal winners.