Idea development

When I considered about which colours to apply to my design, my partner helped me to design a new style of the Olympic rings so that it looks more unique instead of just copying the same Olympic rings. She experimented different "rings" with the Olympic colours, I really like the outcome of the Olympic rings, it looks unique but people can definitely recognize it is the Olympic rings.

Basically, she created the Olympic rings from objects around the studio, she began looking at surroundings and things that could be used as rings. From this she used paint and imprinted some objects of circles, moving to create one using just a paint brush. This method of a single clean sweeping motion reminded her of work she has done previously looking into artists such as Robert Motherwell and ensō. Ensō is a Japanese word meaning circle, it is associated with Zen and Buddhism.

It’s Japanese roots and ideals such as unity and movement connected to it, she thought it would work well for this project. While watercolour paint would provide a smooth outcome that would easily be transferable to digital. Using acrylic paint would have created too much relief from the surface and excess paint that’s wouldn’t be seen in the end product and oil paint would have taken too long to dry. She decided to use watercolour as well to the similar properties it shares within that is most commonly used, but provided more colours she could easily work with. Each circle was painted separately as when painted together the colour would merge and didn’t create the clean look that we wanted to achieve.

I scanned the rings into digitally in order to develop our posters. Simply, I wanted to use it with the Tokyo 2020 Olympic blue so that everything is more connected. Instead of adding too much text on the posters, we decided not to add much text on the posters so that it is straightforward and simple as our main purpose is to tell/ reminds people about the Tokyo 2020 Olympic so not much text is needed.

I was considered about adding the title "Tokyo 2020 Olympic", while, it doesn't look effective on this design. Hence, I looked back to the Tokyo 2020 Olympic logo and I wanted to include chequered patterns design on it.

The result works much better than the previous one, I used "Alte DIN 1451 Mittelschr" on the text "Tokyo 2020" because it is the same as the typeface that they used on their logo. The new designed rings worked really well with the chequered patterns design, it looks contemporary.

Instead of the "rings" poster, I also created some posters that work with those pictograms that I redesigned. Basically, I also used the Tokyo 2020 Olympic blue, while, I also tried to work with five Olympic rings colours. At the first stage, I was unsure whether I should use the text under the pictogram or not. During the crit, some people suggested me to do it, I tried it, however, I personally still prefer not to put text under the pictogram as it looks more effective.