Paris 2024 Logo

By Mark Favermann

Tastefully colorful and aesthetically pleasing, stylish as well as minimalist, modern yet richly symbolic, the Look of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games got many things right and a few wrong.

Marking 100 years since the Chariots of Fire 1924 Olympics, the Paris 2024 Olympic Games held its Opening Ceremonies yesterday by sailing a flotilla of athletes on the Seine. Interestingly, the 1924 Games took place a year before the groundbreaking International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts (Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes). That ran from April through October of 1925 in Paris with the specific goal of demonstrating the excellence of French style and elegant style. The 1924 Olympics used only posters and flags to present its “Look.” How things have changed!

The Look of the Games is the visual identity of the Olympic and Paralympic Games. It embodies the zeitgeist (or positive spirit) of the competition, making it easy to differentiate one Olympic edition from another — London from Rio, Rio from Tokyo, and Tokyo from Paris. It also makes the Games uniquely different from all other sporting events throughout the world. In addition to conveying the Games’ messages, these visuals supposedly promote the culture of the host country, celebrating the spirit of its people.

A view along the Seine. Photo: Paris 2024 Organizing Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games

The Look strives to be the key to the visual language of a particular Olympics, its graphics system integrating all the elements of the competition’s identity. At their best, the graphic theme serves as an indelible stamp, embellishing the sporting and nonsporting facilities and venues, the host city, uniforms, tickets, credentials, products, medals, etc.

The challenge for the “Look of the Olympic Games Paris 2024” was to reflect the country’s mystique of sophisticated elegance, to represent the aesthetic, cultural richness, and diversity of France. Geometric, abstract patterns and forms based on Paris’s architectural heritage were chosen, combining bold blue with warm red, green, and violet colors. These shapes also evoke the historic symbolism of the paved streets of France’s towns and cities.

Paris 2024 Olympic Pictogram, Sport Climbing

The Look strived to achieve a distinctly French sense of character and style. The design was inspired by Art Deco, but it is also a way to highlight the athletes’ performances. Unlike many other previous Games, the graphics of the 2024 Paris Summer Games resonate with a compelling grace. At their best, the refined colors and abstract patterns fuse to create thematically cohesive links across and between the various venues and renowned Parisian icons.

However, along with the other major elements of the 2024 Paris Look, there is the logo. This year’s icon combines three components — the gold medal, the Olympic flame, and the figure of Marianne, the personification of the spirit of the French Republic (liberty, equality, and fraternity) since the French Revolution. Wearing a Phrygian cap, Marianne has become an allegorical signifier of freedom. However, the subtle suggestion of “Marianne’s lips” in the icon (an implied face incorporated into the flame) will need to be explained to most non-French viewers.

Each symbolic significance reflects an aspect of France’s identity as well as the country’s art de vivre. Conceptually this is great. Unfortunately, from a distance, the Paris logo is reminiscent of the branding for scores of utility and natural gas companies, both big and small. The flame has become their corporate flag.

Far worse is Paris 2024’s badly conceived, to the point of downright awful, set of pictograms. The Paris 2024 design team decided, in an embarrassingly quirky way, to reinvent the concept of Olympic and Paralympic hieroglyphs. Their misguided reasoning was “to elevate them from mere visual aids to striking coats of arms that serve as rallying cries for sports fans.” They neglected to add that, when looked at in isolation, many of these ‘pictograms” are visually inscrutable. Check out the bewildering Olympic Pictogram above.

A Mirrored Shade at Marseille Harbor. Photo: The Paris 2024 Organizing Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games

With the advent of worldwide television coverage and increased international travel, the pictograms made their debut at the Tokyo Olympics in 1964. They have become a staple at each competition since. Each host city has come up with its own version of the pictograms to underline the distinctive visual identity of its Olympic Games. They were created  to “communicate to a global audience without using a written language.” Thus the hieroglyphs serve two purposes: functionality and unique identity. Host cities have focused on creatively balancing these public values … until the current Paris Olympics. These latest pictograms are distinctive, yes — but functional, no. And that undercuts the original purpose of pictograms, which is to be a form of user-friendly communication — simple, scalable (for wayfinding, official products, subways, trains, beloved Parisian icons, or venues), able to be clearly understood without words. Paris’s overly complicated iconography exists in a world of its own. In 1822, Frenchman Jean-François Champollion translated the Rosetta Stone. Where is he now when we need him?

Aquatics Center. Photo: Paris 2024 Organizing Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games

An inspired change: the Olympic Medals have a different look. Awards in gold, silver and bronze have a piece of the Eiffel Tower embedded in them. At the center of each medal there’s a hexagon of iron from the tower, fragments taken from pieces removed from the structure during its 20th-century renovations. The phenomenon of the Olympic Mascot began in 1968; it has been met with a very mixed public reception. Unlike most others in the lineup, Paris 2024’s mascots are based on a piece of clothing rather than an animal or alien being. The cartoonish Paris 2024 mascots, called The Phryges (pronounced “fri-jee-uhs”) are based on Phrygian caps or Liberty caps.

More sensibly, sustainability was a major design component for Paris 2024. There was a strong commitment to reducing the event’s carbon footprint, switching to clean energy sources, as well as reducing consumption by recycling and reusing everything. Being as green as possible when renovating existing venues and constructing new structures and facilities was integral to the Olympic planning and development process.

Tastefully colorful and aesthetically pleasing, stylish as well as minimalist, modern yet richly symbolic, the Look of the Paris 2024 Games got many things right and a few wrong. Of course, despite the missteps, “We will always have Paris!”

Mark Favermann’s firm, Favermann Design, was one of five design consultancies chosen from 481 to design the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games in Atlanta. He is an urban designer specializing in strategic placemaking, civic branding, streetscapes, and retail settings. An award-winning public artist, he creates functional public art as civic design. The designer of the iconic Coolidge Corner Theatre Marquee, he is design consultant to the Massachusetts Downtown Initiative Program and since 2002 has been a design consultant to the Boston Red Sox.