Design Sucess and Failure in Relation to Syntactical Guidlines

Many different Olympic logos have been created for 2016, some better than others. The Tokyo one struck me as the best designed. Your eyes follow the "tie" in the Olympic band down to the rising sun in the logo, providing instant understanding of the logo. The tied band is balanced with the rest of the logo, but not in a simple way, the angle creates interesting stress.

On the other hand, this logo is almost all stress. Not only that, but without the text, I would have no idea what the logo was for. The stress lines aren't parallel, so they're not really boring, but they seem to serve no purpose. The square in the center also serves no purpose other than to prevent a negative space in the center from developing. The grouping of the four numbers into a square, necessitating the square, also seems unnatural and forced.

Meaning 1: Representation, Abstraction, and Symbol

Representation:

This photo does a very good job of putting you in the location, and because of that I think its an amazing representation. The framing of the photo helps include the explosion of colors from the sunset and the environment, without losing the ambient light which makes the scenery so beautiful. Although there is limited visibility laterally, the photo captures everything from the path under the bridge to the clouds in the sky above. You can also see the city settled into the hills off to the right, adding a sense of depth. The slight lens flare also realistically conveys the brightness of a sunset.


Abstraction:

This piece of art by Tiago Hoisel seems to be the perfect abstraction of the ignorant tourist. It seems to be both a symbolic abstraction and a stereotypical visual abstraction. We see the clueless tourist so eager to capture himself in his destination that he is completely ignorant to the tidal wave, erupting volcano, and molten rock crashing right next to him. His cross-eyed face with its dumb grin, his belly, and socks with sandals are all abstractions of the stereotypical tourist. The other aspects, like the disasters he is ignorant to, are a symbolic abstraction of the ignorance ascribed to tourists.

Symbol:

This punk rock logo is so appropriate you may even be able to guess the name of the band from it. Bad Religion, anyone? As with most logos, its genius lies in its simplicity. It's two main elements, the cross, which is associated worldwide with Christianity (or to a Christian culture, simply religion), and the red circle with a diagonal line through it which is nearly as universally recognized as "No", or "Do Not". This symbol tells us a lot about the message, values, and ideology of Bad Religion and the punk rock movement: We do not want your religion.