SeriousPotato

Please just skip my post and ignore everything I said. This is my last post on this forum. I absolutely can't tolerate not having an edit feature, sorry. Context: my last post is about 25% done. I have a writing process where I never delete anything, I just move things down and then rewrite at the beginning so I can revisit older scribbles if I need to. Unfortunately, this means everything in my post is not finished and not intended to be seen until it's 100% complete. I wouldn't normally be upset except that it was a slip of the keyboard that entered the post. Thus what's there is extremely confusing, not finished, and I have no ability to change it.

I often hear these types of statements: "The Olympics are about sports and athletes." "I don't like where its going but it is what it is." This is, in my opinion, the source of big misunderstandings. Generally, World Championships like the IAAF World Athletic Championships for example, are about sports and athletes. The Olympic Games are explicitly about following a thousands-years old ritual, steeped in pageantry and myth, where the world's nations get together, set aside differences, and break bread together. The Olympic Games are a colossal––absolutely colossal––work of ritual art signifying technological progression and social change. Sport is the "plot" (if you will), but the true story of the work is about the promotion of world peace, and how individuals, communities, and nations can better themselves through mass effort and volunteerism. To me, the idea of rotating, permanent hosts disgusts me. It pretends that the world is static, that poorer nations should accept their lot rather than set and violates the core ideals of Olympism which is to pretend that the world is static, unchanging, and that discrimination based on history is OK. I would rather see the Olympics cease entirely than to see it turned into such a capitalist scheme. Unfortunately decades of mass media coverage, which values hero-worship, spectacle have hammered a different opinion into people -- In my view, the Olympics aren't the problem. It's that the world has forgotten that this is the central purpose of the Games. The Olympic Games should not be about going to only the safest richest countries, it should be about going around the world. It should not be a luxury event where hosts feel they need to cover their "poverty", or build extravagent facilities, it should be an event that embraces modesty, low-tech. People say Rio was a failure. Only because they went in with the wrong expectations of what the Olympics are and should be. If it was about sports, the Olympic Games would be redundant to the World Championships and would have no reason to exist. Sports at their core are about beating one's opponent. The Olympic Games were NOT intended to be a collection of World Championships (though that's what it became for some sports). Hero-worship, superstar athletes, winning first place, are all the exact opposite of what the Olympic Games The Olympic Games are one of the biggest and last vestiges of a forgotten art form that Ritual Theatre.

Love it! Outside of the commodification / merchandising aspect (which I agree with a few posters here), the execution is sincerely sweet and charming. They feel like real characters.

If anything, this only makes me feel worse. This has no soul or humanity.

More than the renderings, the appointment of Thomas Jolly gives me a big confidence boost that this could be legitimately great and not just a concert. I'm not super familiar with his work but looking at examples from his productions, they are visually striking and seem to have the "it" factor of a great ceremony. The Paralympic stage setting seems better, but still the open format strikes me as an exceptionally difficult platform to express a point of view with artistic storytelling. Can Jolly and team save this from being a shallow pop production? I hope so.

This format for both Olympic and Paralympic seems so ill-suited to theatrical storytelling. I suspect it's going we're either going to see something truly daring and innovative, or it's going to just be strictly protocol and music performances with performers / special effects. I hope not the latter!

Indeed, I would not call this art-deco-influenced. Key traits of art deco are emphasis on verticality, restraint with color, luxury (often conveyed with gold against black/dark color), dramatic lines that convey lifting motion and heroic flourish. It's philosophy is totally different. The emphasis on this design system is color boldness, flatness, uniformity, and rigid geometry. What we're seeing here owes far more to German Bauhaus and Modernism. So if anything it's the opposite of Art Deco. There's no agreed-on title for today's current wave of it (A lot of people I know just call it Abstract Geometric) but the style has been very common from 2010s-2022 for conferences and event branding. https://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=abstract geometric branding&rs=typed

Ugh I sound like such a grump. I hate re-reading my posts and being unable to edit. It's not bad. It's fine.

To add, per my experience in the design world, I suspect the above is more a client-problem and less a designer-problem. I have little doubt that behind-the-scenes there were a lot of innovative, but rejected concepts. That's how it often goes.

Ehh, if the look holds............. Good news: It's perfectly functional and will serve its purpose. Bad news: It's merely functional and serves its purpose. I (perhaps wrongly) thought of all places that could really take risks and do something wildly different and get away with it, it'd be Paris. To think of the huge range of tantalizing directions they could have gone, to end up ordinary and safe is mildly disappointing. And the examples go on and on..... just browse "Conference Branding Pattern" on Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=Conference branding pattern&rs=typed It even reminds me of the scrapped Tokyo 2020 concept (which wasn't fully developed into a Look yet). I wonder what Kenjiro Sano's reaction to this would be. I do love the pictograms though, that's the most interesting aspect.

Sad, I would love to hear this one!

Especially considering the importance of the number 8 in China. It always gives me chills hearing that!

There ought to be more innovation with the Olympic slogans. They are so corporate and watered down, why bother? I loved LA28's "Follow the Sun" and wish they would stick with it, it's the only slogan in recent memory that really stuck with me.

Rio's facilities are largely being used today. An easy test to verify this is to look up the various facilities like Maracanã, the Olympic Stadium, Deodoro Park, or the Olympic Park on Instagram and just look at the trove of photos visitors take. It's not a perfect legacy, but it's a different picture than carefully-framed photos from 2016-17 would have you believe. Six years on, Rio begins transforming venue into schools

Chris_Mex referenced Rio's Aquatics Centre with a photograph. I was responding to that.