The Stories Beneath the 5 Best Tokyo Olympic Pictograms
How to Combine Visual and Sports Identity
I’m something of a fan of the Olympics.
In fact, I’ve had a 11 year obsession that swings from checking how the bids for the up-coming games are doing to just going to the Olympics. I’ve had other interests in the past 11 years that have shaped where I am today and have lead me to becoming a self-appointed scholar of Olympic design.
The Olympics have the clout to make really interesting design statements. Sometimes they are defining designs for a country and a year, other times the amount of effort and money in designing Olympic logos attracts controversy.
We’re one year from the next Olympic games, Tokyo 2020. There’s already a really strong design concept around the games. The logo is a geometric circle made out of rectangular elements. It’s simple, but especially when paralleled with the Paralympics logo it gives a distinctive identity to the games.
You might’ve seen this logo this week, it’s not official, just the work of an independent graphic designer. I do like the red circle being filled in, but if you put this next to the Olympic rings things would get really muddled. I’ll take the real one, which has informed more elements of Tokyo 2020’s design.
Such as the Pictograms
These little images used to represent the different sports on signage, broadcasts, websites, and any where else. They’ve been in use since the last Olympic games in Tokyo (1964) and have allowed designers for the last 56 years to add their own twists to connect the games to the design history of the nations that have hosted them. Athens’, Lilliehammer’s, and Salt Lake City’s were a based off of the Greek, Norwegian and Native American art history. Mexico City 1968 opted for deceptions of equipment and environment. The Grenoble Winter Games of that same year went with stunning curve art. London 2012 came from the polygonal font designed for the games. Nagano 1998 was based off of flower petals. Sydney… had a lot of boomerangs.
Most of the pictograms are very simple. Which is not a fault, these are about communication first and foremost. The Summer Olympics in the 70’s used pictograms that look almost like metro maps. It’s this simple, geometric, design that the Tokyo 2020 games have opted for, just like the original pictograms 56 years prior.
Although all of these are masterfully elegant, there are 5 pictograms I want to highlight to show the decisions the Tokyo 2020 designers made in combining pictogram history, the images of the sports, and their own motifs.
The Modern Pentathlon is a uniquely Olympic sport. Both because it was created specifically for them, and also because there’s not a lot of times you can move from a world class aquatics pool to an equestrian range within a day for a competition. It’s a challenge for designers because there is so much information that needs to be expressed. You don’t want eager track and field fans to find themselves in a fencing arena. There’s been two majors ways pictogram designers have solved this problem. Like the image above some of the historic pictograms have included a mini-version of each sports icon. Most have opted to just show 5 dots (or stars in Sydney’s case) and a single icon of a sport, usually the horses.
I’m happy Tokyo went with representing all 5 because this is my favorite pictogram ever. The 5 shapes are composed in a perfect way to feel the momentum of the runner, the horse, the gun, the swimmer, and the sword. The moment right before the strike. There’s an anticipation in it all. It’s a perfect summation of “forward” in sport.
Notice also that other then the swimmer and horse these are all unique poses. The runner is running cross country, not the 100 m sprint. The fencer is not lunging, because including the whole person would be too much. Each icon fits in with the rest perfectly. I want to watch the modern pentathlon now, and other’s will too.
It’s been well marketed that there will be 5 new sports coming to the Tokyo 2020 games. (Actually looking at these pictograms its more like 8, the largest increase in sports since WW1) What this means is that there are a handful of symbols that will debut at these games, setting the precedent for all future games. Sport Climbing is one of these new sports, one with the most staying power compared to the other new sports. (Baseball and karate are good in a Japanese market, surf and skateboarding are too rebellious to even want to stay at the Olympics) So the question the designers has was: how to you represent climbing? Their answer, as seen above, is perfectly great. The overhang of the cliff and the figure work to create the upward feeling that is the basis for the entire concept of climbing.
It will be interesting to see how Sport Climbing will be pictogrammed going forward. I can imagine a carabiner on a bright blue background ala Mexico City 1968 or boomerangs climbing on other boomerangs for the next Australian game. It’s just one other thing the lucky designers of these images will get to play with.
After the 2008 Beijing Olympic games both Baseball and Softball were both voted out of the following Olympics. That didn’t last very long as both sports are returning to Tokyo. Probably not a permanent stay, but I would be surprised if Los Angeles doesn’t host some bat and ball sports as well. The two sports come and go to the games as a package, differentiated by the gender of the players and each unique quirks. They are two different sports treated as the Title XI answer to the other. The challenge for pictogram designers: how to display these differences. Tokyo answered the same way as all other Olympics. Baseball gets the bat, Softball get the glove. That was a decision made by the Atlanta 1996 designers, and all Olympics since have stuck with it.
It’s not even always, unlike what I assumed, the underhand pitch. Athens and Beijing have the stylized softball catching a fly ball. Batting and catching are verbs present in both sports. Although the Tokyo icons do make the main distinction between the two games the center of the design, following precedent they didn’t need to. These sports have already been abstracted to a single piece of equipment, offense and defense.
Karate is the 3rd martial art to be included in the Olympics. (At least the 3rd originating from the Sea of Japan) With it comes two disciplines: Kumite and Kata.
The two disciplines have a storied history.
Kumite (組手/ literal in English “meeting of hands) is the competition format we’re all familiar with. Two athletes sparring on a mat, scoring points. If you’ve seen Judo or Taekwondo you understand what this is.
What I’m interested in however is Kata. (型 / literal in English “shape”) Although coming from a place a self defense Kata has more to do with gymnastics then boxing. It’s an event where athletes preform routines, flowing and moving from different poses. Karate is not designed to be sparred, it’s designed to be practiced. That is why Kata is in the Olympics, Kata is Karate. Perhaps Kumite will join the other martial arts as an Olympic staple, but despite it’s soul Kata probably won’t leave its home nation.
Although I say that, but Judo had it’s first Olympics in Tokyo and stayed through.
What does this mean for the design? Well, actually the first question is why is this design even here? A sport as diverse as track and field: running, jumping, throwing, walking, the marathon, the hammer throw, the steeple chase: only has one symbol for all of that. Karate has 2 symbols for the same sport. I don’t actually know why it was made, but I can guess. This will be the only shot Kata has to get an icon.
The Kata pictogram will be icon that all other Kata symbols are based off of. It might one day be revived, and when it is the designers of those games will find that pose. That delicate yet fierce pose will be what they work from. Kata is a quiet event, only 20 athletes will compete in it. Compared to something like Athletics, with 1000+ athletes and 48 different events, it is tiny. This was a choice by the designers to represent their sport tradition in a way they won’t be able to later . At the 2020 games this piece of Japanese identity will stand along with the sprinter and football player. Equal in the eyes of the icon.
Other sports and traditions will have something to look at. Something to use. The day Wushu enters the games, for example, this emblem will have set its stage. Just like Judo in 1964 and Taekwondo in 1988 has for Karate. Sports persist on the backs of good design (and some corruption). Design is a form of power, but just like the pose, is more delicate then a punch.
There have been 650+ pictograms used at the Olympics included the 50 in Tokyo 2020. They’ve all used design to connect the visual identity of a nation to the identity of a sport. They’ve brought elements from art, objects, architecture, politics, and of course sport. One thing that’s never been used in natural landscape. I’m surprised by that, if you’ve taken AP Human Geography you’ll know that landscape and environment do a lot to define culture. Culture in turn does everything to define design. That was until Masaaki Hiromura (the designer of the icons) added a little rounded triangle to the marathon swimming icon.
Marathon swimming is an insane event where some of the craziest people on earth all jump in open water and swim 10 thousand meters in 2 hours. (25km is an event at the world championships and that takes 5 hours.) I guess because the triathlon had it’s other two segments already represented the long distance wanted their shot too. Whatever the reason for the sport it does exist and has been in the Olympics since 2008. So, the question is how do you differentiate pool water from open water swimming? The first answer is: you don’t. These pictograms are about verbs. Kicking: Balls your playing soccer, heads it’s Taekwondo. Throwing while jumping forward: that’s handball’s verb. Riding a horse daintily: Oh you know that’s Dressage. Open water swimming’s verb is “to swim.” It’s the same thing outside or in. In Beijing and London there was no symbol for open water swimming. It was just a strange event in the normal aquatics line up. Rio did have a pictogram for it.
So, like… what does it mean? The Rio pictograms as a whole aren’t the most readable design but I do still love them. So what separates this swimming from normal swimming is 1. The direction of the swim and 2. The rugby ball floating in the sea. Well a buoy, but I didn’t get that at first glance. You could maybe see this as a water polo symbol if you think about these symbols enough to write this much about them. It was an attempt. “Swimming around bouys” is not the verb I think about with marathon swimming, although it is technically an accurate description.
Tokyo, however, is amazing. It’s the same exact design as the indoor swim, except there’s that mountain peak in the background. Reminiscent of Mt. Fuji and the other volcanic peaks that make up the center of Japan it is the simplest way to represent the outdoors that could’ve been used. More effective with color’s reversed the snow capped peak has the same wave pattern as all the water in all the pictograms. Connecting solid and liquid water, and connecting to Japanese art history. On the topic of iconic imagery:
Ocean and mountain flattened into one image. You could obviously write so much more about The Great Wave but you get the idea. The marathon swimming pictogram taps into an element of the landscape to communicate something about a sport. I wish Rio had done this and I want every Olympics after this to do the same. Paris, put the Eiffel Tower there. Sydney, get that Opera House and Urulu. Los Angeles, love ya, I’m gonna need to see Santa Monica pier, maybe also the Half Dome.
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Use iconic imagery in your icons. Japan gets it.
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Other Mentions
Quickly I want to touch on a few more of these symbols.
Find a more dynamic image and chaotic image. The whole design breaks down in this amazing way. This man is attacking a flying death orb with his unicycle while falling into a ditch. You’ll probably see memes of people giving there own descriptions to these pictograms and I welcome it.
I don’t understand why this is what it is. That is the logo for 3 on 3 Basketball but why did they need to use it? It’s strange to me. Completely separate from what the rest of the design is trying to do that logo just sits there. Waiting. Of all the sports played today 3 on 3 is one of the most democratic. Everyone can own a piece of 3 on 3. Why is the corporate logo for the FIBA organized games on the official Olympic page?
I didn’t talk about any Paralympic designs here. The Paralympics are an amazing event celebrating diversity, accessibility, willpower, perseverance, and the best parts of the human spirit. It just doesn’t get that much coverage in the US. The design for the Paralympic pictograms are even more brilliant then the normal ones. This one is for goal ball, a sport designed to be played without vision. (Think bowling with a soccer goal)
The Olympics are a fantastic event that at its best can symbolize human values we should celebrate. It doesn’t always get there, but I these pictogram symbols do a lot of symbolizing.
All the pictograms used are owned by the IOC. The Tokyo 2020 Logo is Owned by Tokyo 2020. The Toyko 2020 pictograms are designed by Masaaki Hiromura.
