Tokyo 2020 Olympics

For research for my own travel app and the icons I need to create for it I wanted to do some research further a field and when I came across the Tokyo 2020 Olympics I had to do include them and research further into their design! I enjoy seeing the different concepts and design for each olympics and I have looked at a range of the different olympic styles over the years I did like a lot of them but I decided to research further into the Tokyo set as I felt it would be one of the more challenging sets and I enjoyed the very minimal colour palette.

Background research

These icons were created by Japanese designer Masaaki Hiromura, he wanted the pictograms to embody the uniqueness and athleticism of each sport at the Olympic Games. The inspiration for the his style of pictograms came from the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games, this was when the first pictograms were introduced at the games. The theme for the designs were in line with overall theme of the 2020 games which was ‘Innovation for Harmony’, and they wanted to highlight the dynamism of the athletess and their sports.

Concept behind the designs

I watched a video on the concept behind the idea for these particular pictograms. It was highlighted to me that they were designed to express the charm of each individual sport actively and clearly. They wanted to represent the fluidity of the athletes movements, they did this by using clean, simple shapes and forms. It is evident in the screen shots I have included below that they have based their design of the fluid movements of the athletes.

My Re-Creation

I decided to re-create the surfing icon from this olympic pictogram set as I thought it would be a more challenging form to construct.

Tokyo Pictogram-

My re-creation-

What did I learn?

Researching the olympics has made me aware of the beauty in simple design, using clean, simple shapes and working on composition I too can create icons that (like the Tokyo 2020 Olympics pictograms) can be understood by everyone everywhere.