What is a design system ?
“A design system consists of both tangible and intangible elements. Components, patterns, and style guides are tangible elements.” (Xd adobe ideas / principles) 2019-21
“Brand values, which naturally include a brand legend and brand mission, are a set of guiding principles that shape every aspect of your design.” (Xd adobe ideas / principles) 2019-21
In a design system the patterns visible to users have to be functional, serving same purpose across the groups.
How is a design system organized?
According to adobe a design system is organised by “setting clear standards via strong vision through communicating / documenting, which helps to create a consistent experience among a range of products.” Therefore each design we see in the Olympic games, range from multiple sports with the same design style and size.
Pictograms were created by reflecting the original font variations, light and regular. The bodies in pictograms tend to be thicker and lines representing the sports tend to be lighter.
The designers wanted to achieve the look of proffesionalism and elegancy in the pictograms. This is exactly why we are shown either only one dominant, standing out arm to connote dominant movement or 2 arms with different thicknesses to create a “swinging” movement to represent the heaviness of the sport.
The backgrounds are shown to us in a pebble or oval shape. Using this shape allowed the designers to successfully implement the positioning and feeling of freedom of the sport in the oval e.g. Track Cycling, the design is slightly cut off in the bike wheel, showing what direction and speed the cyclists are going in.
These pictograms have been used in mass media purposes such as, maps, digital media advertisements, stadium tickets & posters.
The emblem can be analized to multiple parts. The colours represent the landscape of Rio, Blue- the atlantic ocean. Yellow - Brazilians warm weather and lastly, Green - the flourishing nature. This creates a welcoming atmosphere to tourists coming into Rio as well as a great choice to represent a positive narrative of the selected city for the olympics.
The emblem is created by 3 characters holding hands / hugging and connecting to eachother. This creates an atmosphere of unity, respect and love that will be shown by the athletes in a sporting manner and an emotion of joy that everyone in the competition or the viewers will be filled with joy and compassion.
To create a successful logo for the olympics, the logo must be tested and reduced to maxium size to check if it can be used for various digital marketing such as clothing or tickets. The logo must remain flawless and clearly visible on physical prints or digital media. Below we are shown the sizing of the smallest possible visible Rio 2016 olympics logo with accurate dimensions.
(TheOlympicDesignDotCom)
The font has been designed to match the style of the wavy lines in the pictograms and the wavy like emblem. This font has successfully achieved the playful like spirit and perfectly matches the rest of the olympic designs of joy and easiness. The displayed font was meant to be used for short messages and communicating.
