Olympic Flag: A Challenge to Designers !

Continued from earlier posts.

Olympic Flag: A Challenge to Designers !

Many countries have honoured the International Olympic Flag on their postage stamps. Apparently, the rings on the flag look so simple  and easy to draw but the correct depictions of the rings may not be as simple or innocent as it looks.

 “The international Olympic Committee (IOC), has the copyright of the symbolic rings, charges of their use on stamps and elsewhere, and insists on their correct representation. But Oliver Andrew finds out, vide, Gibbons Stamp Monthly (August 2007, page 93)  the number of stamps showing them wrongly is still quite large. …”. 

 Taking  the eight intersections from left to right, the first should have the Blue ring going under the Yellow, then, alternately , to the eighth where the Green ring goes under the Red.  Note: that the three central rings (Yellow, Black and  Green) have 4 (four) intersections each, while the two outer rings (Blue and Red) have only 2 (two) intersections each.

 How tricky this is for the designers can be seen from the fact that the rings are depicted correctly  on one the Poster of London Olympic-1948, and wrongly on another Poster. 
 Interlinked Rings are placed in a straight line (!) on this stamp from Great Britain. 

 A glaring mistake committed by the Australian designer designer/s in depicting correctly the rings on the flag in this stamp.

Examples are numerous. Oliver Andrew points out that the Olympic Rings are depicted correctly on Egypt, SG-1847, wrongly on SG-1991, and correctly again on SG 363.  Nigeria has them wrongly on SG 759 and correctly on SG 813.

 The Interlocking symbol of our interdependence must be shown correctly, not too loosely as it is on Belgium, or wrongly, as on San Marino and Yemen as also on the  Qantas Olympic Torch Flight Cover (1956) Athens to Australia.

 The colours, which symbolize the five continents, may not be changed, as they have been on Italy, where the central ring, is shown as gray.

 Rings should not be merged into a single multi-coloured ring as they have been on Morocco. 
 The Red ring on the top corner appears to fly upward on this Winter Olympic stamps from Bulgaria.

  The New Official Olympic Flag being used since XXIV^th  Olympiad, Seoul 1988. 

Rio De Janeiro welcomes Olympic flag

 Brazil’s Rio will be the first South American city to host the Olympics in 2016..