Olympic Posters and the Glorious Man

Posters from Antwerp, 1920; Paris, 1924; Helsinki, 1940

Posters from Tokyo, 1964; Mexico, 1968, and Pictograms from Munich, 1972

It’s Olympic season, and for a design nerd like me, that means looking at this year’s posters and graphics and seeing how they stack up to the greats.  It’s the designers’ conventional wisdom that work like Kamekura’s 1964 Tokyo posters, Aicher’s 1972 Munich Pictograms, and Wyman’s pop-art-infused 1968 Mexico emblem are among the most celebrated, but sometimes conventional wisdom is meant to be challenged.  And that’s precisely what David Ross did last week on the Colbert Report.  Ross is certainly no slouch when it comes to art; he’s curated for the SFMOMA and the Whitney, among others.  But his contention on the Colbert Report last week got me thinking a bit more curatorially (is that a word?) about what the point of the Olympic posters is supposed to be.  It’s worth a full watch, but Ross’ general point was that starting around the mid-60’s Olympic posters pivoted sharply from the Greek-inspired archetypal Glorious Man to more of a corporatized logo depiction, devoid entirely of strength, perseverance, and pride that had for so long been the classical depiction of the Games.  And to the detriment of the Olympics, according to Ross.  He believes that the loss of the Glorious Man and the depiction of his Glorious Ass Kicking of Power and Glory makes the more modern Olympic poster a failure.

I thoroughly disagree.  Let me first say that I absolutely love the Olympics.  I can easily dominate a 5-hour women’s hockey and curling broadcast, no problem.  I think it’s great.  But I don’t think it’s great because there is some Glorious Man that is displaying his dominance.  And I don’t think it’s great because it’s about seeing the USA kick some every-other-country-ass.  I think the Olympics is more about the finesse and subtlety these days than about brute strength.  It’s more about the sub-plot and the micro-stories than about the overall medal count.  These athletes have proven that they are the perfect example of their sport, indeed the perfect example of humans ability to do said sport, and that’s the beauty of it.  The fact that not even 1/10th of a second can be the difference between a gold medal and a missed spot on the podium in downhill skiing, where that difference represents mere inches over the course of a 1.something mile course is the beauty.  The fact that the best men and women of any particular sport are progressing that sport steadily and incrementally across the globe (see: 720s, 1080s, double-corked McTwist 1260s) is the beauty.

And that in and of itself is a whole lot harder to portray effectively as a poster or an iconic design than the Glorious Man.  And that’s why I actually do agree with the designers’ conventional wisdom from above.  The Games are meant to be branded indefinitely, as a point in time where athletes competed at the top of their sport and perfection (for that particular time) was, ideally, achieved.  So the posters and imagery should reflect that.  Simple, minimal, indefinitely memorable design is the equivalent I believe to what the athletes themselves are striving for.  A simplest solution to a difficult problem in that time.  Whether it’s the tightest and cleanest triple lutz or the tightest and cleanest logo, designers of the Olympics and the athletes themselves are all pushing for perfection.

I do think that the more recent campaigns have been less successful.  Many of the more recent imagery has been mashed into androgynous, hyper-politically correct sprites or cartoons that lose all meaning or perhaps try too hard and end up falling short (see Albertville, 1992, Nagano, 1998, or, dear god, that awful thing from Atlanta, 1996).  This year, I’m happy to see that the individual sports posters are actually quite nice.  Vancouver has added a little bit of character and life back into the individual sport posters, although I just can’t really get behind the logo itself.  They had to go and add that little smiley in there didn’t they.

All that said, Stephen Colbert’s poster by Shepherd Fairey is hilariously perfect in its own Glorious way.

GO USA!  DEFEAT THE WORLD!