London 2012 | What you didn’t know Research/ My initial intention was to create my own branding for the London 2012 Games. Taken from my original FMP Proposal ‘My chosen subject area is the London 2012 Olympic Games. The work will be my own branding of London 2012. The function will be to promote and represent the games.’
From the start I knew I wanted to incorporate illustration work into my poster designs. It’s an area of the industry that I had not previously tried. I saw it as a challenge but also as a way of learning a new skill before the end of my degree. I began by looking at existing illustration artists for inspiration. Some of these included, Graphical House
Marc Kolle
Karol Gadzala
Tiffany Farrant
I felt that this may be a tad on the ordinary side so I began by looking at why some people were against the Olympic Games being held in London and their reasoning. One of the reasons that I discovered was the costs involed. “The Olympics in London is going to cost the British economy around £560m in just security costs alone! Most of which will be payed for by the British tax payer, unwillingly but this happens all the time, the tax payer having to invest in acts which not everyone wants to, such as supporting acts of war, or as mentioned, sponsoring the corporations which shit all over us! No doubt, just like when the royal wedding was happening, our rights to protest will soon be stripped of us and it’ll now become illegal to utter a single word of opposition to the games, as seen in Soho Sq. earlier in the year.”. I also found an entire webstie called ‘Boycott London Olympics’. The next step was to consider what could be branded, for example, Tickets envolope, employee tag/identification, letter head, key rings, cap, T-shirt, postcards and so on. After a tutoril crit with my tutors we discussed the idea of creating an infographic piece as I was struggling for direction with the branding and wanted to create something more original. I began to look for interesting statistics that I could use as the informtation that would be displayed as a series of posters or as a leaflet, or perhaps even both. After conducting my research I found a huge amount of facts that were intersting and not generally known to most people. Some of these included, Around 900,000 items of sports equipment will be needed for the Olympic Games including: 3 metal detectors (Beach Volleyball) 92 ball pumps (Water Polo, Basketball, Handball, Football) 2,700 footballs 2,200 dozen Tennis balls 8 trampolines 65,000 towels
James Graham
The Olympic Park is the size of 357 football pitches. More than 200 structures on the Olympic Park needed to be demolished before building works began. More than 200km of electrical cables – enough to stretch from London to Nottingham – were put into two six-kilometre tunnels built under the Park. The 52 pylons in and around the Olympic Park could then be taken down. 4,000 newts were relocated from the Olympic Park to the Waterworks Nature reserve. 500,000 plants being planted in the Olympic Park’s wetlands areas. I felt I should look at where the Olympics started, a brief history is below. Ancient Olympic Games: “At first, the Olympic Games lasted only one day, but eventually grew to five days. The Olympic Games originally contained one event: the stadion (or “stade”) race, a short sprint measuring between 180 and 240 metres (590 and 790 ft), or the length of the stadium. The length of the race is uncertain, since tracks found at archeological sites, as well as literary evidence, provide conflicting measurements. Runners had to pass five stakes that divided the lanes: one stake at the start, another at the finish, and three stakes in between. Art competitions were part of the modern Olympics during from 1912 to 1952.
Tom Bryant
ilovedust
Other inforgraphic examples
London 2012 | What you didn’t know Development/ Initial sketches
The final series/ At the moment they are as A4 posters. I wanted to have six but unfortunately time got the better of me. To develop the project a little further I would scale the designs down and create a small leaflet with a front cover and brief explination.
These were not all of the ideas that I had, however it would require a larger piece of paper to show all of these inital sketches. The next step was to bring them into Adobe Illustrator and begin the digital part of the process.
Development in Illustrator/
Tom Bryant