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Olympic Games Tokyo. Kinetic pictograms

Corporate design not only conveys the spirit of a company or an event, – the design itself also reveals technical and aesthetic preferences that are influenced by the “zeitgeist”. This applies to the visual design and pictograms of the individual sports that make up the Olympic and Paralympic Games. As these form a part of our visual communication history, we can easily recognise the current changes that they convey. In our era of digital communication, which is no longer entirely new, the organising committee of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games is presenting kinetic pictograms for the first time in the history of the sporting event. The 73 pictograms were created by Japanese designer Masaaki Hiromura, and animated by motion designer, Kota Iguchi. The kinetic pictograms are presented against a white background, as fragments, depicting a short sequence of movements which are typical for a particular sport. Static pictograms were first introduced at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo. With the Paralympic Games, they made their initial appearance at the 1992 Summer Games in Barcelona.