Han Meilin and the Pain of Olympic Mascot Design

Clearly one of the best things about going to conference things like this week’s mediabistro Circus, and its surrounding events, is getting to meet some of our readers. Such was the case with getting to talk to Donald Lee, who was kind enough to send us a couple of links to a discussion we got into about the mascot design process for the upcoming Beijing Olympics. He passed us over to the NY Times‘ Olympics blog, with their lengthy story about mascot design in general and the amazingly absurd number of revisions made when creating these weird little furry emblems of sporting glee. He also sent us a 2005 CCTV interview with the designer of the Beijing mascots, Han Meilin, which isn’t so hot in the objective reporting department (state run news outlets are like that sometimes), but provides another interesting look into making these things. Personally, we think we’ve just finally decided that we’ll be Waldi the Dachsund fans forever. We just don’t see how he can ever be beaten.

Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.