DarJoLe

Better late than never I guess...

Does anybody have photos of this year's sponsor pavilions? And also of that fan zone at the apex of the Park?

Paralympic look is only swapping out the Olympic rings for the Paralympic Agitos, and adding sponsor boards to the corrals around the field of play. However, from that shot above it looks to me like they are simply covering up the Olympic rings with blue tarpaulin...

After the bright festival colours of London and Rio I wonder if Tokyo will go back to a smaller, muted, but crisp palette of colours. I can definitely see venues using the indigo blue of the logo but with sharper pops of brighter colours in certain areas say around the Rings/Agitos. As much as I would love to see red embraced it is not a good colour for TV and tends to 'bleed' on camera. It will also be interesting to see how much digital Tokyo embrace. Digital tier dressing is now commonplace across the sporting world, but cost and reluctance from the IOC has led to print-based venue look being the default. Whether Tokyo begins to nudge the IOC towards an animated look in their venues remains to be seen. I would love for the pictograms to be similar to the CGI animations at the handover, almost 3D-esque with a hint of 'Tron'. I have good feelings about Tokyo. Like London I think they could really take the concept of a 100% integrated look of a games to new heights which I don't think Rio delivered.

London changed the colour combination for certain sports, aquatic sports were blue and yellow for example, more action-orientated orange and blue, blue and orange, etc. Heritage venues were a combination of purple and another colour. But London kept the overall graphic element the same throughout, so you had the burst graphic around the Olympic rings and radiating lines consistent across all the venues surrounding the field of play, it was just the colours that changed. Rio's look comes from the overall graphic which they have cropped into, the issue being the crop is different for the field of play surrounds for the blue venues to the green venues to orange venues, and I believe this is what is causing a bit of inconsistency in the venues. I'm not sure it's necessarily the wrong approach, after all there is no real correct approach to an Olympic look, but it might have been better to either remove all non-green/orange/blue elements from the tier dressing, or use a section of all the colours. The hurdles, for example in athletics, had bits of the red and purple section of the Rio overall graphic, which looked a bit jarring with the majority blue and green venue. There have been some excellent moments with the look though which have bettered on London's; they managed to change the shape of the kayak boat numbers to the pebble shape which in London the sport federation were reluctant to, as well as the horse jump flags which was an absolute battle in London because of the sharp shard shape. It's just a shame the wayfinding, no doubt because of cost, has been a very standardised rectangular shape and not something like the pebble shape boards we saw when the look renders were unveiled. Tokyo will be interesting to see what kind of 'shape' their look takes on, in some ways after the bombastic festival and hi-colour look of London and Rio I wonder if they will go the other way and look more towards a sharp dark blue look with hints of red. We shall see.

The IOC will never allow the Paralympics to come first. It's an interesting political relationship between the two; the IOC do not particularly care about the IPC and what happens at the Paralympics, once the Olympic Closing Ceremony is done they are off and out of there. LOCOG was always challenged by the IOC as to why London 2012 was so integrated as an OCOG, they were never particularly enthused by the Games having the same logo for example, let alone decisions being made about the Olympics as to whether they affected the Paralympics. We were always warned against mentioning 'transition' (the logistics of turning an Olympic venue into a Paralympic venue) to the IOC as a reason to why something Olympic-related might not happen in the look, for example. The IPC on the other hand actually like being associated with the Olympics. It gives the Paralympic movement kudos and for them in some way they see the Olympics as the warm up to their event (which was the angle Channel 4 took in London in promoting the event). The biggest issue the Paralympics face is sponsorship and getting that into the games through advertising within the look for example, which was the biggest concern for the IPC on their visits and not, unlike the Olympics, about getting the event logos in the right places for broadcast and media.

The velodrome was looking excellent last night, very sharp.

It's really unfortunate Rio seems to have had problems with the delivery of the look. Whilst in some areas you can get away with a 'what the public don't know won't hurt them' it's annoying to see the lamp post holders actually still in place in the Olympic Park awaiting the banners. Whether these come remain to be seen. The dressing of the venues is rather haphazard, but they seem to have got the logos and FOP look in the right places, so the media at least should be happy with their shots. Some of the actual fitting leaves a lot to be desired, there's some ill-fitting tier dressing in some venues and it doesn't seem like it has been cared for in its installation in others. The high winds in the Park damaging barriers is unfortunate but it seems there's a people and logistics problem in clearing them up. At the end of the day its the sport that takes the priority and despite its complexities look is always seen even within most of the Organising Committees as nothing more than colour and wallpaper but it is an integral part of any Games's success. It's certainly working its magic in the colour stakes and bringing the sports to life and hopefully even though the Games have started the obvious challenges can be overcome.

Few more coming in...

I think it's a bit early to tell at this stage with just one sport. At the end of the day the logos all have to be in certain places along the length of tiers anyway, and the look or pattern that goes in between is repeated along the tier and around the venue. London's was the burst shard graphic around the Olympic Rings/Agitos with a hot spot of colour behind that faded to dark where the host city name was. Rio's is a crop of the blobby landscape graphic from which different elements of look are created. From what I have seen so far though, whether it be time constraints or budget cuts that dressing the venues has been an issue. London had this right up to the start of the Games but Rio seems to have only dressed parts of the football stadiums that are on camera for events rather than the whole venue. This may be because of ceremony factors though and more will appear overnight and before the next event. We will see. Gymnastics looks great with the all-green as a contrast to London's all-magenta and looking forward to seeing the orange of the beach volleyball. The colour will certainly pop and be memorable on TV and in photos.

I believe the venue colours are Orange FOP, green tiers Green FOP, orange tiers Blue FOP, green tiers The screen surrounds seem to match what the tier dressing is supposedly eventually to appear in the venues yet to have them dressed.

Very interesting to note that with the gymnastics and women's football so far, they have only dressed the first tier of the venue that faces the camera. Budget restrictions may have curtailed dressing the whole venue which is a real shame.