The design for the new medals is unveiled and evil tounges have already started to attack the design. According to the organizers the shape is supposed to represent the famous Italian town square, The Piazza, around which Italian city life and culture is revolving. A very nice idea hadn't it been for that this is probably the last image that comes me in mind when I see them.

On the positive side is that they're creative, but pretty? I don' know, and maybe that's not the idea either, but at least they could have tried to transform the Olympic ideal to something different than a bagel.

Olympic Bagels
Olympic Bagels 2


The medal has the logo of Torino on one side and images of the different sports on the other.

In ordinary design talk the medals are also characterised as "Round like the Olympic rings...symbol of victory...the empty space encircles the heart and the beat of life..." etc It doesn't really help as long as everyone will only see a bagel hung around the neck of winning athletes!

What might be most surprising (at least to me) is that each medal is obviously handmade, and that it takes 6 to 8 people ten hours to manufacture one medal. For all the 1000 medals that will med produced for the main Olympic event it will take more than 10.000 hours - no wonder Olympics is a costly affair.