Olympic Pictograms Convey the Passion of Sport

2006/11/30

Designing sports pictograms for the 2008 Olympic Games was a daunting task, but it came easy to 27-year-old art student Wang Jie, that is, after he found his inspiration in ancient Chinese seal characters.

Wang hit his stride when working on a pictogram for the 2008 equestrian events. “When you look at the seal characters, you may find resemblances between a horse-rider and the character ‘man’ and between a racing horse and the character ‘horse’,” said Wang, a student studying for master degree at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, where he recalled how he had worked out the pictograms for the Olympic equestrian events.

After associating Olympic graphic images with ancient Chinese seal characters, Wang spent another two months researching seal characters. He went on to design pictograms for eight other Olympic sports in response to a March 2005 BOCOG (Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad) design solicitation. Four professional design institutes and organizations, including the Central Academy of Fine Arts, were invited to help design the images.

“The equestrian pictogram was the first created and the only one that was not revised. I like it the most,” Wang said. He acknowledged that he didn’t understand the characters very well at the beginning, but with the help of some faculty members he succeeded in finding ways to imbue the characters with the passion of the various sports.

The Olympic organizers favoured designs based on Chinese seal characters. They believed the designs represented an eclectic mix of the pictographic charm of ancient Chinese characters and the simplicity and dynamics of modern graphics, making the pictograms easy to recognize, remember and use. Out of the more than 40 candidates or teams considered, two were selected for the final round. The design based on seal characters by the Central Academy of Fine Arts and the one based on string by the Academy of Arts and Design of Tsinghua University were short-listed by experts after an in-depth appraisal.

“Since we invited several professional organizations to hand in original designs, all the proposals were of a high level,” said Zhang Ming, vice-director of BOCOG Culture and Ceremonies Department. “Some of them were based on paper-cuttings, woodcarving and inscriptions on bronze, all of which carried the idea of traditional Chinese culture.

“Seal characters won unanimous approval at last because they not only feature the particular movement and dynamism of each sport, but are also easy to recognize, remember and use.”

The two chosen schools formed a joint group to perfect the designs and finally came up with the “Beauty of Seal Characters,” pictograms with strokes of seal characters incorporated into their basic form.

Beijing Olympic Pictograms feature 35 sports pictograms: rowing, badminton, baseball, basketball, boxing, canoe/kayak flat-water, canoe/kayak slalom, cycling, equestrian, fencing, football, artistic gymnastics, rhythmic gymnastics, trampoline, weightlifting, handball, hockey, judo, wrestling, swimming, synchronized swimming, diving, water polo, modern pentathlon, softball, taekwondo, tennis, table tennis, shooting, archery, triathlon, sailing, volleyball and beach volleyball.

In December 2005, BOCOG submitted the Beijing Olympic Pictograms to the International Sports Federations for approval, which endorsed the pictograms in April 2006. In June 2006, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) gave them a thumbs-up. BOCOG released its pictograms of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games on the occasion of the two-year countdown to the opening of the Games.

“The pictograms of the 2008 Games integrate the visual charm of inscriptions on bones and bronze objects in ancient China with the simplicity of modern graphics,” said Zhang, when speaking of the reasons why the pictograms finally won.

In basketball, the artists considered two main movements, shooting the ball and dunking, at the very beginning. Since shooting has rarely been used in Olympic pictograms before and is more appropriate with other sports, they decided on dunking, according to Qian Zhe of the Academy of Arts and Design of Tsinghua University, a leader of the design group.

Qian said more than 10 pictograms among the 35 considered were revised several times.

“Because we had to use the most accurate movement to describe all the sports, as well as give consideration to the entirety, many pictograms were revised time and time again, such as those for the trampoline and gymnastics events,” Qian said. “We had to pay attention to all the details of a certain movement.”

Because they represent “rubbings” taken from ancient bronze ware or stone tablets made on a sheet of rice paper, pictograms can be presented in black and white, which enables reproduction of the original pictorial and textual content.

Hang Hai, an associate professor with the Central Academy of Fine Arts and another leader of the design group, said, “We used the effect of sharp contrast between black and white from the typical, traditional Chinese artistic form of rubbing.” When the idea is used with sport pictograms, the powerful contrast between black and white renders the vivid beauty of the sports, while the implied movement of the shapes of the pictograms perfectly represent the passion and dynamic nature of the sports.

A basic image element of the Olympics, the Olympic pictograms will be widely used in Olympic signage, advertising and communications, image-building, TV broadcasting and in souvenir design. Since the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games, pictograms have played an important role in Olympic sports imaging as well as in Olympic marketing, Zhang said.



	Article featured in Beijing This Month, December 2006 Publication sponsored by Information Office of the Beijing Municipal Government, Beijing Municipal Bureau of Tourism