The Weekender – Olympics special – torches, Vimto and bikini books

Date
3 August 2012

Something odd is happening in London. After weeks of frothing at the mouth about transport meltdown and everyone being sued for doing anything marginally Olympics related (“I heard their going to sue frogs for JUMPING!!”) the British media has had to grudgingly concede that it’s actually been kind of great. The transport seems ok, frogs are legally unmolested and we’re winning a few medals (admittedly in sports where you sit down but still..). So, happy to jump on the passing bandwagon of Games-based bliss, The Weekender is, like Sanka in Cool Runnings, feeling very Olympic today…

Best of the site

We’ve been immersing oursleves in all things Olympic with our Designing London 2012 feature and this week it was the opening ceremony and the graphic elements that we explored, we were blown away by Chris Ware’s new book Building Stories, a truly heroic achievement and we took a moment to remember a past champion, Japanese designer Shigeo Fukuda.

Best of Best of the Web

Someone was going to do it and sure enough DesignBoom showed us these Lego Olympic stadia, we enjoyed applying the competitive spirit to graphic design by looking at the year’s best logo redesigns (so far) and we remembered Paris, the city edged out by London in the race to host 2012, through this lovely video over on Colossal.

Best of the Rest

Elsewhere Creative Review carried some Olympic infographic excellence we got the inside track (sorry) on the Opening Ceremony from the man who wrote it and we enjoyed this republished interview with Thomas Heatherwick about that torch, knowing what we know now.

Tweet of the week

“These divers are good, but imagine how much better they would be if the water was Vimto (and they had lions behind them).”

So Tuesday afternoon and all eyes are on the diving as Tom Daley and the other one battle it out in an unbelievably tense final. And @RealVimto Tweet this brilliantly shameless plug..

Body issues of the week

Watching the Olympics can be baffling as you try and get your head round some of the physical feats you’re witnessing but now thanks to the BBC you can find out which athlete on show is the closest match to your physique. I’m not sure if the idea is that you can then choose your sort so you’re there in Rio 2016, or if it’s just a nice way of finding out that I resemble a whippet-like female fencer from Peru. Fun though either way!

Inclusive language lesson of the week

It’s all very well for us Brits to expect everyone to speak English but maybe we should make a bit more of an effort yeah? Let’s start by hearing from the language expert who helped come up with the Dothraki dialect on Game of Thrones. Really fascinating.

Beach volleyball achievement of the week

So the hottest ticket in town at London 2012 has been the beach volleyball in Horseguards Parade where taut, toned and tanned players in skimpy outfits (of both sexes) go head-to-head in a barnstormingly fun pseudo-sporting contest. So more swimwear in real life we say, and with that in mind let us present bikinis that resemble book covers…

Take that Seb Coe! moment of the week

The simplest ideas can be the best. Revenge of The Rings is a silly Tumblr that takes that preciosu symbol and, well, mocks the heck out of it. We love.

Press release opening of the week

Surrounded as we are by celebrations of success – highest, fastest, longest, strongest, most commercially-viable – it’s nice to see the Paper agency taking a different tack with their Festival of Failure. But it was the first sentence of their press release which goes down as arguably the most intriguing opener I’ve ever come across… “Have you ever inadvertently killed an owl in one of the world’s holiest places?” Um, no. I don’t think so. But I am DEFINITELY reading the rest of this..

Whiff whaff really has come home! Have a snazzy one!

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About the Author

Rob Alderson

Rob joined It’s Nice That as Online Editor in July 2011 before becoming Editor-in-Chief and working across all editorial projects including itsnicethat.com, Printed Pages, Here and Nicer Tuesdays. Rob left It’s Nice That in June 2015.

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