Let’s go deep on Olympic pictograms

⌛ It’s Thursday, and we’re 58.28% of our way through 2024.
Issue #132: minimalist icons and letting yourself fail
By Harris Sockel

“The Olympics have the clout to make really interesting design statements,” observed self-appointed “scholar of Olympic design” Elijah Cobb on Medium a few years back. Cobb is obsessed with one element of the games, pictograms, and now I’m obsessed too. So obsessed that I’m dedicating this entire issue to Olympic iconography — past, present, and future.

Let’s dive in.

Originally created to guide tourists who don’t speak a host city’s language, these tiny icons communicate the nuances of ~50 sports in just a few shapes. They’re often inspired by a city’s unique history and culture. Beijing’s 2008 pictograms mimic the lettering on ancient Chinese pottery. Nagano’s 1998 pictograms resemble flower petals (a nod to the region’s majestic fields of lilies and zinnia):

Nagano’s 1998 pictograms

Within a super-minimalist set of icons like these, minute changes can have a huge impact. Take Tokyo’s 2021 set. These pictograms follow the principles of good design to a T: they’re immediately legible, recognizable at any scale, and super simple… yet they’ve got some personality, too (a hard balance to strike!). Remove any dot or line and the meaning is lost:

Tokyo’s 2021 Olympic pictograms, which were brought to life during a six-minute performance in the opening ceremony. A group of (very caffeinated, I imagine) people in blue jumpsuits mime every single pictogram. It’s delightful.

For decades, pictograms have featured tiny humans doing a sport — but Paris went in a different direction:

A few of the Paris Olympic icons, via Olympics.com. Paris is calling them “coats of arms” instead of pictograms. Can you recognize which sports these icons represent without thinking too hard?

Instead of humanoid action figures, these icons are meant to represent the essence of a sport itself. Cobb thinks some of these designs fail on a few levels: they’re less immediately legible and don’t feel like a complete “set.” Humans instinctively recognize human-esque shapes more than, say, shoes.

But! You’ve got to give them credit for trying something new, and as designer Linus Boman explains… maybe we don’t need functional pictograms anymore, now that anyone can use their phone to see the Olympic schedule in their native language. Paris’s icons are more decorative (and less purely functional) than those in previous years, pointing toward a more experimental future for Olympic graphic design.

Your daily dose of practical wisdom: on the Life Force Juice of Creativity

Author Mandy Stadtmiller woke up one day and realized she’d stumbled into the darkest morning routine of all time: envy-Googling people from her past. In one of the most honest Medium essays I’ve ever read, she opens up about how to overcome jealousy, perfectionism, and the paralyzing feeling that you’ll never be good enough:

If you detach from the outcome and the need for validation, the LIFE FORCE JUICE of creating and trying things (and yes, even spectacularly failing and falling on your face) will make you feel more alive than you’ve ever felt.

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Edited and produced by Scott Lamb & Carly Rose Gillis

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