Celebrating the Olympics Through a Multi-Disciplinary Lens
As the world comes together to celebrate the beginning of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, we wanted to take a moment to highlight two incredible projects that celebrate the history of the Olympics.
United States Olympic and Paralympic Museum
Centre Screen
CREO Industrial Arts
Gallagher & Associates
The United States Olympic and Paralympic Museum is a 60,000-square-foot universally-designed facility that is the first museum dedicated to U.S. achievements in both the Olympic and Paralympic games. The museum opened to the public in 2020, and was honored with an SEGD Global Design Award in 2021.
With Paralympians and Olympians sharing equal billing, the Museum is an inclusive experience through its content and design, its heroes and visitors, its architecture and, of course, its interactives. The visitor learns about a particular skill important to a wide number of Olympic and Paralympic sports, and then puts that skill into practice via a short training exercise.
Several members of the design team and Olympic and Paralympic athletes convened at the 2020 SEGD Exhibition + Experience Design event to discuss the importance of accessible design. They also hosted a virtual tour of the museum, showcasing the interactive elements of each exhibit.
Brand Identity for the 1968 Olympic Games
Lance Wyman
In 1968, SEGD Fellow Lance Wyman, then a young designer with George Nelson in New York, won an international design competition to develop the graphic “look” for the XIX Olympiad in Mexico City. More than 50 years later, Wyman’s Mexico City designs still stand out for their innovation and visual energy.
“The armature of the Olympic brand is Baron Pierre de Coubertin’s 1913 symbol of five interconnected circles representing continents. Welding compasses and ruling pens, Wyman introduced numbers into the lockup by adjusting line widths and counter spacing. He recalls an epiphany: ‘Discovering that the geometry of those five rings could be expanded into the 68 was like a miracle!’”
For the first edition of SEGD’s eg magazine, published in November 2012, Juanita Dugdale wrote about Lance Wyman’s contribution to the 1968 Olympics. Read more about the incredible story at the link below.
About SEGD
We are designers of experiences connecting people to place. SEGD is a multidisciplinary community collectively shaping the future of experience design. We are a thought leader and an amplifier in the practice of experience design. Learn more at segd.org.