london 2012 olympic coin designs revealed

‘official olympic UK £5 coin’ by saiman miah and pippa sanderson image courtesy the sun

continuing on a tradition dating back to the 1952 helsinki olympic games, the official UK £5 coins of the london 2012 olympic and paralympic games have been revealed. birmingham school of architecture student saiman miah’s design of the olympic coin features the london skyline next to the river thames with pictograms of athletes revolving around the circumference of the surface, much like the face of a clock. ‘as an architecture student I wanted to include a detailed impression of london’s iconic skyline on my design,’ says saiman. ‘[the pictograms is] a reference to another london icon, big ben.’

the ‘london 2012 olympic UK £5 coin’ by saiman miah image courtesy the royal mint

in a similar manner, the official paralympic coin designed by hereford college of arts graduate pippa sanderson elude to the characteristics of big ben, dissecting the face of the piece into four sectors that illustrate skills of athletes. ‘with the coin being circular,’ says sanderson, ‘I played around with circles found in the games, and decided on a spoked wheel for manoeuvrability, a target for accuracy and a stopwatch for speed. I split the design into these elements and added the face of big ben to represent london.’

the ‘the london 2012 paralympic UK £5 coin’ by pippa sanderson image courtesy the royal mint

back side image courtesy the royal mint

via BBC