Sunday, June 26, 2011

New graphics for Canadian Olympics

I really love this new design for the Canadian Olympics. I have watched the evolution of the maple leaf since I was a child and remember the big change back in the 60's when the flag was overhauled to be the new single graphic leaf. This design is really cool. It's so bold and dramatic and I'm sure the teams will be delighted to support the new brand. I've added some of the text from the web site I visited to download the graphics. 
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1664066/canadas-bold-leafy-rebranding-of-its-olympic-team




Canada began competing in the Olympics in the early 1900s, and, in overhauling the team’s branding, Ben Hulse drew from more than a century of stories and iconography. The maple leaf stood out as the unifying element, both for its meaningful history (it appeared on Olympic athletes 60 years before becoming the symbol of the nation’s flag) and for its versatility (it appears clean and classic on marks and intense and vibrant on mosaic graphics).

Hulse gave as much consideration to typography, delving into the team’s history for pointers -- like the blocky letterforms on athlete uniforms in the 1930s -- and scouring the Internet for just the right typefaces. “The aesthetic needed to be sporty but not futuristic, historic but fashion forward, bold but humble,” the designer tells Co.Design. That may sound like a string of buzzwords, but in point of fact, the mix of imagery speaks to that difficult balance.
The most exciting part of the process, according to Hulse, is devising a strategy that can evolve over the next year as the committee gears up for 2012: “We've explored how the mosaic graphic might be used from a system perspective -- overlaying on photos, cropping, keeping the intention and energy of the lines -- but playing with the notion of hiding and revealing the maple leaf depending on the application.” Phew, sounds like good training for the branding Olympics -- an event in which, we’re sad to say, the USA wouldn’t take home any medals.

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