He's a 12-year-old leopard sporting the green and gold colours of Bafana Bafana, and who at one time "decided to dye his hair green as he felt it would be the perfect camouflage against the green of the football pitch". See him in action here.

Zakumi - a Mascot with attitude, via FIFA.com:

The name "Zakumi" is a composition of "ZA" standing for South Africa and "kumi", which translates into "10" in various languages across Africa.

Zakumi was born in 1994 and will be sixteen in 2010 - as young as South Africa's democracy.

Again via FIFA.com, Official Mascot unveiled:

The original creator of the design is Andries Odendaal from Cape Town, and the mascot costume itself was produced by Cora Simpson of Cora's Costumes cc in Boksburg. "Zakumi is a proud South African and, as such, an ideal ambassador for the first African World Cup." explained Danny Jordaan.

I know Andries as a fellow interactive designer and developer - he was the huge talent behind Wireframe back in the early days of new media establishment in South Africa and more recently consulted for HIVE. He has received wide spread recognition for his work (check out Whizzball for example) and is considered one of the foremost Flash and Director developers in the world. Congrats dude, another feather in your cap!

Zakumi is by far the best FIFA World Cup mascot when you consider his predecessors, or as arbitraryuser put it so well, "breakfast cereal characters". It's also nice to see the mascot fully dressed again. ;)

Laaddduuuuummmaaa!

Read more at IHT.com: Leopard Zakumi leaps into World Cup spotlight

Quite inspiring, I especially love the floodlights and nighttime illumination. But from an aerial perspective I still think it looks like a giant toilet bowl, as I mentioned before (last paragraph). I suspect it will grow on me though since I drive past it almost weekly.

The stadium at Green Point and supporting infrastructure for 2010 is the single biggest capital project Cape Town has ever undertaken.

More reading: Green Point Stadium on Wikipedia

Via FIFA.com:

Bright, vibrant and celebratory, the colours of the poster are inspired by the South African flag, but also draw upon the African continent. The strong yellow background symbolises the sun as the source of warmth, energy and life.

I noticed that the design has changed ever so slightly since the voting process: the shoulder has been removed, and the text inside the head has been enlarged. I still prefer this poster to the other two finalists, but the solid yellow background bothers me in that it doesn't pull the elements together, and gives the poster an incomplete feel.

The unique shape of the continent almost naturally lends itself to the shape of a man's profile, while the face represents every single African supporter from Morocco in the north, Gambia in the east, Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia in the west to South Africa in the south.

I wouldn't say that's a fair statement - I've never imagined the profile of a head while looking at the African continent - and saying that discredits the whole creative process, when the reality is that the concept is completely unique. Well, to me anyway! (see Africa brand on Flickr).

More 2010-related design - the eThekwini municipality in Durban has launched its unique 2010 FIFA World Cup logo:

Via BuaNews:

In the logo, two arches come together expressing our unity in diversity, the colours reflect our oceanic backdrop, green for our recreational environments and the golden beaches which mark us as South Africa's outstanding tourism destination.

They fail to mention that it also resembles the design of the King Senzangakhona Moses Mabhida Stadium currently under construction. Note not "Mabidha" - naughty naughty, Wikipedia. Very dynamic, I like it!

See Cape Town's logo.

UPDATE: and even more! Official emblem of the FIFA Confederations Cup 2009 unveiled in Durban via FIFA.com

UPDATE [03/12]: Switch behind 2010 poster at BizCommunity

South African residents are being invited to make their voices heard from today by voting for one of three designs to become the official poster of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. It is the second time since the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany (see those poster designs) that the residents of the host country are actively involved in the selection of the official event poster.

From a total of 16 creative entries, all submitted solely by South-African [sic] based agencies, three proposals have been pre-selected by a jury.

Go choose your favourite, and stand the chance to win two FIFA World Cup tickets provided by MTN! The deadline for voting is midnight on 30 September 2007. You can also vote via SMS or phone.

Unfortunately it seems as though FIFA need to work on their geolocation sniffing because on attempting to vote, I was presented with the following error message:

We are sorry to inform you that you cannot take part in the voting because either your point of access does not appear to be in South Africa or you do not reside in the country.

They'd better correct this ASAP otherwise the exercise will be a huge failure.

Also it's a pity the posters can't be viewed at a larger resolution, and why only 3 final designs? And why only 16 entries? Was this an invitation-only competition? I suspect details of the process will be revealed later and I'll be interested to hear how this was handled, because I can imagine a number of designers and agencies calling "foul" again.

I like them all for different reasons, but prefer the middle one, because it has more impact and I love the face/continent combination - although the plain yellow background is a little boring and feels incomplete. The first one doesn't say much to me and doesn't have much of an African feel (it might be losing detail at that resolution?), while the last one is well executed and clever, but perhaps overly so. There's something about it that makes me feel uncomfortable.

Judging by the similarity in colour, I suspect they were all subject to strict FIFA guidelines, as with the official logo.

Which is your favourite?

UPDATE [12/09]: The voting page has been updated with the following:

Please be aware that you have to perform the following steps to submit your vote on FIFA.com:

1. You need to access FIFA.com from South Africa (reflected by your IP Address).
2. You need to create a FIFA.com Club Member Account (registration is quick, easy and free).
3. You have to be a resident of South Africa (reflected by the choice of country in your FIFA.com Club profile).

I doubt this will encourage many to vote... how disappointing!

It uses nine five-story cubes that twist as it rises; the top-most segment is twisted ninety degrees clockwise with respect to the ground floor. One reason for the building of Turning Torso was to reestablish a recognizable skyline for Malmö since the removal of the Kockums Crane in 2002.

(Photos above by Meltingfire, mr_reynolds, Ndesh and paralecitam. See more on Flickr.)

One of Santiago's other equally impressive designs, the Chicago Spire supertall skyscraper, will become North America's tallest structure and the world's tallest all residential building when completed in 2010.

I've now discovered that I came across two other Santiago structures (that I'm aware of) while backpacking around Western Europe: Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències (City of Arts and Sciences) in Valencia, and the Puente del Alamillo (Alamillo Bridge) in Seville, Spain. Really photogenic architecture.

I wouldn't say no to any of these buildings replacing the Athlone Power Station that dominates Cape Town's outer skyline - the future of which remains uncertain. Maybe something to complement the Athlone stadium and, err, the rest of the Cape Flats (aka. "apartheid's dumping ground"). Just imagine the view!

Ah, and to balance out the Green Point Stadium currently under construction - of which I'm not a fan. Cape Town's own giant toilet bowl. Or maybe it should be nicknamed "The Ashtray", to fit in with the The Pepper Pots and Table Mountain theme. Or is that the "Tampon Towers". Hmmm... then that would make the stadium the... nah, nevermind.

The logo depicts the city's defining icon, Table Mountain, under the African sun and with the waters of Table Bay beneath.

It will be used in conjunction with the official emblem, to form a composite logo. [...] the main aim was to create a unique identity that captures the design essence of the official emblem. It had to have a harmonious design relationship with the official logo in order to generate maximum brand impact.

Nice, as simple as that! Well, I was hoping for a penguin playing one bounce, but I suppose the mountain will do. ;) Any guesses for the other host city logos?

More here: City unveils 2010 host city logo

Photos are © City of Cape Town (Source)

Interesting to see that they've used the logo that I reproduced (in my original post below) throughout their document, although when they specifically mention the Official Emblem (Section 2), then they use the Wikipedia/widely distributed version. Weird.

Here's a large version of the logo that I pulled off the PDF, with the nice gradients and drop shadows.

--

When I see the 2010 FIFA World Cup logo online, which is fairly regularly, I'm curious why it's always the version that can be found on Wikipedia, which is unfortunately also the version on which the multitude of criticisms were based when the logo was unveiled last year. Wikipedia list the image with FIFA.com as the source, which I'd be willing to dispute, but you never know.

Is this poor brand management on FIFA's part?

They'd want to protect the identity of the World Cup, obviously - but given the persistent use of this version, and the unofficial vector file in the wild (which if I'm not mistaken, is mostly incorrect), are they not doing more harm by not providing a replacement or making the official version available? Hackers Hawkers will always find a way, so that can't be stopping them?

Take a look at this logo that FIFA are using on their website - notice the colours, gradients in particular, bevel on the outer green swish, etc. For comparative purposes, I roughly attempted to reproduce it using the vector EPS as a base: here's the result. Huge difference.

Switch Design could provide some insight (hey! you guys reading this?). After browsing through their impressive portfolio, I discovered they're also responsible for designing the familiar CI's of Ceres, Clover, Juicy Lucy, SAB, SABC and Steers, to name a few.

Here's another discovery I made, to further put things into perspective. The two logos on the right contained FIFA copyrights dated 2006 and 2002.

Interesting, né.

Faced with legal action and the risk of losing the 2010 World Cup semifinal event because of a possible delayed start in construction of the stadium, the City of Cape Town yesterday agreed to a negotiated settlement with leaseholders of the Green Point Common that will safeguard the area from future commercial or residential development.

The city released its urban design proposal for the stadium site that will reconfigure the Green Point Common into a "high quality recreational precinct" and retain the Metropolitan Golf Course as a nine-hole course.

Popular crime website hacked by competition, Crime website linked to shady gay 'activist' (both via The Citizen), and Crime expo website disappears from the Net (via IOL):

Independent Democrats Cape Town leader Simon Grindrod will be at the Caledon Square Police Station on Thursday to ask police to conduct a criminal investigation into the founder of the crime expo website.

"Only three days after The Citizen exposed the site as a scam, it has been shut down. A message at the site indicates that it has closed down - its malicious architect has run with the money," says Mr Grindrod.

"It is alleged that founder Neil Watson was a fictitious character created by Juan Uys of Gay and Lesbian Alliance infamy. If true, this is the same cruel man who threatened to contaminate blood donations with HIV if homosexuals continued to be required to fill in a questionnaire before giving blood."

More links on this bizarre story:

• Crime website mystery man going into politics? (The Citizen)
• Truth surrounding Crime Expo SA (My Broadband)
• crime "scam" expo SA (Homecoming Revolution)
• www.crimexposouthafrica.co.za
• www.truecrimexpo.co.za
• crimexposouthafrica.wordpress.com

This is awesome news, I've really been hoping this would happen and it's a nice suprise. Read more on Google Maps Mania - Big news: African continent gets Google Maps roads and streets:

...Johannesburg has street level maps while the city of Cape Town reveals major routes and unmarked secondary streets.

Throughout the rest of the continent countries like Kenya, Nigeria, and Egypt (to name just a few) all show major routes while some countries contain street level mapping for major cities.

Until now I've used either Shell Geostar (for A to B directions and specific location searching) or Microsoft's Live Search's street maps which present a nicer aerial overview. Although Live's maps for Cape Town in particular aren't any more complete than Google's, I prefer the satellite imagery that Google Maps have which make the hybrid view so much cooler.

For comparison, check out the aerial view of this photo in Live and Google Maps - switch between the two across tabs after removing any side bars in Live; I matched them up pretty well. Here's a closer look.

I realised for the first time the other day that the photo I've linked above is the single point at which South Africa's two longest national roads, the N1 (becomes Table Bay Boulevard) and the N2 (becomes Eastern Boulevard) converge on Cape Town's foreshore. Funny how many times I've driven that route and never thought about it that way.

I had another thought worth sharing the other day: with all the debates around the now confirmed location for Cape Town's new 2010 Football World Cup "African Renaissance Stadium", if FIFA are so transfixed on a location with a view of Table Mountain, why didn't they consider Robben Island? They could engineer a bridge over Table Bay linking to both national routes, and since renaming is all the rage these days (and what or who is Robben anyway), call it "FIFA Island". And then the V&A's Nelson Mandela Gateway would really be a gateway. And you'd be able to take the 3 hour, 11km "Long Walk to Freedom" over the bridge, or run a half-marathon there and back, for a ridiculous touristy price of course. I also like to think that kitesurfers would finally have something physical to jump over.

YEAH!! Who's with me?