If you’re out in the centre of London today, you’ll probably notice a few people waving Union Jack flags and cheering on our Olympic and Paralympic heroes. Back in August and September Britain smashed their own record books by coming forth in the medals table, only narrowly pipped to third place in the closing days by Russia.

Up to 500 stars, including Olympic gold medallists like sprinter Christine Ohuruogu, cyclist Rebecca Romero and 13-year-old double Paralympic champion swimmer Eleanor Simmonds, are expected to take part.

With a record haul of 19 Golds, and a massive total of 47 in total, it’s forced us to ask one vital question: Are the Olympics getting easier?

Let’s look at the facts: starting from the Rome Olympics in 1960, Britain’s Gold Medal count has read 2, 4, 6, 6, 3, 5, 3, 5, 1, 11, 9, and this year 19. So in the last three Olympics, we’ve won more Golds than in the previous 9. Much like our beloved GCSE and A level examinations, there was a time winning an Olympic Gold (or getting an A grade) really used to mean something special. It’s time we got that back. Nowadays it seems they’re giving them away to anyone who shows up on time.

Chris Hoy: turned up on time. Three times.

We’re proposing that for 2012 we add an extra ten meters onto all the distance events, perhaps an extra twenty metres for the long distance runs. Triathlons and Pentathlons should each be given an extra event, and all equestrian sports should be done on a pony or donkey.

We haven’t worked out any suggestions for long jump or javelin, but you have any thoughts do feel free to share them with us and we’ll send them up to Boris and Seb next week.

Eleanor Hardwick was born in 1993. These are some of her photos. I don’t think there’s anything else I can add apart from saying, yes, she really is only fifteen. More photos here.

Liked this.

Found via age.

As you might have noticed from newspapers, radio and TV, our economy hasn’t been doing so well recently. But it doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom with LOVE’s new patented game “Credit Crunch - The Game!”

It’s really easy to learn, and can be played by any number of people of all ages. Simply stand around with your friends as normal working, drinking and chatting. Whenever someone mentions the words “Credit Crunch”, punch them in the face as hard as you can.

It really is great fun.

If you only go to Liverpool once this year, make sure it’s on the 23rd October. That’s when the inaugural Liverpool Design Symposium will take place at St.George’s Hall. In case you didn’t know, Liverpool is the European Capital of Culture for 2008, and to celebrate this three of its top design agencies, Uniform, Smiling Wolf and Black & Ginger, have collaborated with D&AD, DBA, Design Initiative and Merseyside ACME to set up an insightful and  inspirational programme of speakers to share their wisdom with you.

Here’s a rough breakdown of events:

1pm: D&AD Student Awards Seminar. Speakers:

Rhiannon James, D&AD Education & Professional Development Manager

Fergal Kilroy, D&AD Student Awards Manager

Richard Scholey, Creative Director, Elmwood

Suzie Webb, Freelance digital guru

2pm: DBA Business Briefing: Surviving the Credit Crunch

Adrian Rasdall, Revenue Matters

3.45pm The Emotional Type – 

Bruno Maag, Founder, Dalton Maag

5.15pm D&AD Awards 2008 Winners Showcase and Q&A

It should be a great day, with plenty to learn, and plenty of people to meet. There should be a fair few people going from here, so if there’s enough interest we might get a small bus to take us over. We’ll let you know of any spare places nearer the time. 

Does the casual arrangement of TV remote controls in the picture above leave you distressed and short of breath? Perhaps you have problems sleeping at night if someone’s put your Eric Clapton CD back in the ‘E’ section (it should blatantly be in ‘C’). Or maybe you can’t walk past picture frames without checking they’re perfectly straight?

If this kind of obsessive behaviour sounds like you then you’re in luck as we’re looking for a Senior Art Worker or Studio Manager. As the title would suggest, you’ll need to have a few more qualifications than a couple of OCDs, but a keen eye for detail and organisation wouldn’t go amiss. Here’s a quick Q&A to help clear things up:

Q: Can you use InDesign?

Q: Can you use Photoshop?

Q: Can you use Illustrator?

Q: Can you manage a studio?

Q: Can you deal with IT issues? (server setup, email, work backup, studio hardware and software upgrades and installation)

Q: Can you keep creatives in line and make sure they file their work correctly?

Q: Is your name Johnny, Jon, Jonathan, or Jon boy? (this is not essential)

If you’ve answered ‘yes’ to all of the above questions, and would like to work at LOVE, email your CV, salary expectations and examples of your work to s.wood@lovecreative.com

Date: Thursday, 2nd October, 2008

Time: From 6 30pm

Venue: The Northern, Tib Street, Manchester

Attending: TBWA, CB/JWT, Brahm, LOVE, Public, plus anyone else interested.

More specifically, these people here, here, here, here, here and here. Sorry if I’ve missed anyone off.

Do come along if you’re in the area.

Thanks to everyone who’s applied to CLASS so far - we’ve been pleasantly surprised by the quantity and quality of work sent in. Deadline for entries is this Friday - as in Friday 3rd October, 2008. We’ll draw the line at midnight, although you should really have better things to do at midnight on a Friday night. We’ll be looking at all the work in the week afterwards, and post details up here. (We’ll also email you if you’ve applied. It’s the polite thing to do, and my mother reads this blog.)

Some people like awards for creativity. Some people don’t. If you’re the latter, please click here now.

For the rest of you, we’ll keep this as short as possible. Last night was the 5th Fresh Creative Awards in association with Campaign and Design Week. It was held at the Imperial War Museum in Manchester. It was attended by over 350 people. We were lucky enough to win a total of five Golds, three Silver and six Bronze awards. We also had two pieces nominated for the Big F. But The Chase’s calendar won that. If you haven’t seen it already, it’s really quite good. Below is our work that featured.

Silver Cross: Gold: Packaging

Silver Cross: Gold: Writing for Design, Bronze: Promotional Brochures

STA: Gold: Writing for Design, Best use of copy. Silver: Art Direction

National Year of Reading: Silver: Direct Mail. Bronze: Writing for Design

Skeggy’s mate’s sisters hairdresser’s uncle’s Rugby Tournament: Bronze: Low Budget

Bruntwood: Bronze: Business to Business

University of the Arts, London: Gold: Print. Silver: Promotional Brochures

Microsoft: Bronze: Writing for Design, Best Use of Illustration

Special thanks must go to the excellent Ian Stevenson for his illustrations for Microsoft, and to Ben Wedderburn for his equally beautiful photography on the Silver Cross Packaging. Apologies we failed to mention you before.

Well done to everyone who worked on the projects, and thanks to all the judges and Fresh. See you next year.

It’s probably a little late notice for anyone who doesn’t have a ticket, but the new D&AD Book launches tonight at Urbis. We’ll be there, perhaps you will too. Maybe we could even have a drink together. Simon Waterfall will be speaking, as will Garrick Hamm, who’ll be taking over from Mr Waterfall as D&AD President this year.

The book’s been designed by Neville Brody book has attracted a bit of controversy for the fact that the ‘&AD’ (as in advertising) is left on the back, with Design featuring on the front. Apparently Big Nev’s not a massive fan of adland, but on further investigation it’s actually about ‘Digital & Anti Digital’. Hope that’s cleared that up. This post has also given us the opportunity to shamelessly re-plug Gre’s beautiful work for University of the Arts, London which features among its pages somewhere.