Using only shape and colour apply your developing understanding of pictograms and symbols to develop a visual monotone symbol to effectively communicate your chosen activity, the activity being a sport that is played within the olympics.
Work within the supplied grid to generate a range of potential responses before selecting the most appropriate.
Consider audience, scale, contrast, impact and clarity.
Taking a look a previous years pictograms of each individual sport was the first thing I did, analysing what makes each individual and the symbols as a whole effective in communicating their own sport within the olympics.
Munich 1972 (Otl Aicher)
These symbols appear much more structured than most other sets of olympic symbols, simply because of Otl using his well known 45° grid. The lines
of the pictograms are constructed based on angles of 45° or 90°, hence the geometric appearance. This gives it unique look compared to the typical hand rendered, more artistic look.
Los Angeles 1984 (Keith Bright and Associates)
This set of olympic symbols takes a different approach as far as the body limb composition goes, by having more of a separated silhouette look compared to the usual fluid flowing body parts. This creates a more detailed and clear representation of each sport.
Athens 2004 (ATHOC 2004 Image & Identity Department)
As opposed to separating the limbs such as within the two previous examples, these symbols instead have a fully black silhouette with white lines to create detail within each symbol. Along with that, there seems to be a somewhat inconsistency when it comes to the thickness of the strokes as, unlike with other examples, there aren't standards set such as each of the limbs being the same thickness throughout the set of pictograms.
Water Polo
The two pictograms above were the strongest ideas out of the group due to their simplicity and soft feeling with the smooth curves rather than a jagged silhouette.
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| Initial Sketches |
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| Initial Vector Ideas |
The underlying concept behind each of the ideas is that they represent someone in motion, playing water polo as this comes across as a much more obvious depiction of the sport, as opposed to just having maybe the water polo ball.
The two pictograms above were the strongest ideas out of the group due to their simplicity and soft feeling with the smooth curves rather than a jagged silhouette.
Taking the symbol further, I experimented with various line styles to see which would work most appropriately representing flowing water. Although a single curvy line could potentially work, I wanted something more obvious at first glance, hence some of the other experiments shown above.
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| Final Outcomes |
The reason behind choosing this symbol as my final outcome is that the thick curvy line, to me and others I had spoken to, clearly represents water more so than the others.
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