OLYMPIC GAMES: THE DESIGN
t’s often said that you don’t notice good design or bad design as much as you feel it, and there is no bigger stage to show it off than the Olympics. Anyone who has watched any Games on TV will recall sporting moments, with perhaps just a fleeting hipster aesthetic; this impulse led to the much-maligned London 2012 logo. However, sticking to outdated or overly conservative design work (whether you are a sovereign nation or just make stabilisers) is guaranteed to make your brand look like something from the past rather than the future. In particular, the radical simplicity of the design for the Tokyo 1964 Games is credited as a factor in rebranding the entire nation of Japan as a modern country that had emerged fully from a devastating war.
