The Art of the Olympics 34:02

this is 99 percent visible im romanmars， the Paris Olympics kicked off last week and the opening ceremonies were somethingelse they were awesome the metal Bang Gojira plastic power techniques from a Castle alongside a headlist Marine and twanet selendion Sang at the base the eifl tower， a mask torch bear Ran on the roof tops like Tom Cruise in missionpossible and yes there was an animal cruelty free symbolic devrelease a mysterious figure road on a metal horsedown the sand unfurling massive doff links it was weird and wonderful this week were presenting a freshly remixpair of older Olympic stories from 9 pi will hear more about some longloss Olympic events that we think should definlybe brought back but first， this 2017 episode about the iconic design of the nineteen 68 games in Mexico City， enjoy！

the United States， leads the Olympics in metal Awards and is just about Supreme in the sprint races on October sixteenth。

1968 American Springters， Tommy Smith and John Carlos climbed onto the Podium at the mexcocity Olympics to accept their metals yesterday they came in firstand third。

in the two hundred meter。

Dash Smith had one gold。

three Carlos had one brongs as the national anthem began to play the men both African American boughed their heads and raised their fists in the black power solute thats producer clear moment they kept their fist raised until the last notes of the anthem faded away the gesture was a statement of black pride and affiance itstoconsidered one of the most overtly political statementsmade in the history of the modern Olympic Games？

but that wasnt the only politically significant moment at the Olympics that year a Mexican heard learn cata bacelio became the first woman to ever like the Olympic caldrin a check jimness beat outsoviate gymness for the overall womens title just two months after the sobiate invasion of Chuckle Savokia。

it was also the first time a Latin American city or even a Spanish speaking country had hosted the games it was a big deal to have hundreds of thousands of international travelers comvisit Mexico the Mexican government saw the Olympics as an announcement to the world， Mexico City had arrived as a major international Metropolis。

so almost everything about the 1968 Olympics felt revolutionary。

including the design of it， the images and logos associated with the 1968 Olympics were you biquitous at the time， they were plassered all over the city this complete design campaign would become one of the most famous in Olympic history， and it would set a whole new standard for games to come。

but these government commissiondesigns would also be coopted by local activists who wanted to review the darker political reality in Mexico that was hidden behind the beautiful classy imagery of the 1968 games in the decades leading up to the 1968 Olympics。

Mexico had gone through period of major economic growth it became known as the Mexican miracle。

the Mexic miracle typically uh you know， historians conventially speak about it as a period spanning from the midthe nineteen forties to the late 1960。

the country had rapidly industrialized。

rapidly urbanized and its capital Mexico City had grown into this enormous sprawling Metropolis the city grew faster than it ever had in Mexicos modern history thats Louis Custonida hes the author of spectacular Mexico design propaganda in a nineteen 68 Olympics becauseof its size and layout Mexico City was a challenging place to host a major international event like the Olympics Mexico City was sprawling and spreading still at the height of its miracle i mean even until the Olympics are literally about to happen there are all these doubts about whether the Mexican government will be organized off to undertake the whole aspectical of that magnitude the Olympic organizers needed to show that theyre metropos was safe。

navigable， cohesive， and you know exciting they wanted to create a visual identity for the Olympics to release sell Mexico City to all these visitors seen it for the first time。

so they decided to hold an international competition to find a designer who would create a logo and graphic design campaign for the Olympics they wanted something that looked cosmopolitan in contemporary and distinctly Mexican。

and this is where an unlikely charactercomes in imelancewimingimt designer iworker in New York in 1966 lancewimanwas。

a 29 year old graphic designer when he heard about the competition。

he knew that he in his design partner Peter Murdoc had to get on the short list of contenders this listincluded design teams from all over the world who would come down to mexco city for a two weeks trial run after their two weeks？

each team would present their design for consideration and we got on the listical down in November of 1966 and Peter， and i had just started out we didnt have any money， so we only could only afford one way tickets they hopped on the plane with there。

one way tickets and landed in Mexico City by the way neither of them had ever visited Mexico before they didnt really know anything about the country if they were going to design a logo to represent Mexico weiming and murdoc would have to learn a lot and fast。

they started were most tourist by visiting museums they spent a lot of time at the museum of anthopology where they studied artifacts from Pre Columbian Mexico， like the Aztec。

Sunstone and ancient Maya mirrors i actually was floored by some of the earlycultures because they were doing things in a contemporaryway， with geometry， with graphics。

the boldlines and bright colors and geometric shapes reminded women of the kind of up art that was popular among contemporary artists back in New York up art or optical art uses contrast geometry and other tricks to give the viewer the impression of movement and so informed by both indigenous artifacts and modern op art weiming came up with a logo that rift on the five rings of the Olympic symbol i realize that the geometry of the five rings could be integrated with the uh the year of the event sixty eight he superimposed the digits 6 in 8 over the classic Olympic rings the circles on the rings rated out from the circles in the digits in it created a hypnotic stripeeffect and from that i developed the uh typography to make the word Mexico its this very groovy looking typography made of three parallel stripes weimencreated a logo that he considered both very modern and quote essentially Mexican the end of the two weeks came and um we started making prints of the Mexico sixty logo type and people from publications and people from the public relations they wanted copies of it。

but who were working like crazy making copies in doing all that and then one men realized that no one actually told him that if he had the job so he asked one of the organizers。

i said did we win need he go so i i guess so！

wine had created a stunning logo in typeface for the competition but choosing this white guy who had never been the Mexico before was a bit problematic its not that unusual for people not born in Mexico for artists and people and in culture in the arts to be involved with these kinds of statesponsorcampaigns its not entirely unprecedented， but is still a very unique situation， especially given the fact that you know this is a this is a very very significant project thats author Louis customer again what is very uh striking almost rocking perhaps is that the fact that of course lance wayman is is very much on proven as a designer hes very young as he hasnt had much time to do much yet uh and yet somehow he is given this very uh high degree responsibility as part of the design campaign。

weiming and murdoc ended up staying in Mexico for two years to work on the campaign and along with a team of designers many of them Mexican they came up with ways to use their typeface。

logo and other designs all over the city hypnodexstripes were turned into strict uniforms for the events workers in volunteers。

the patterns and colors used in the logo ended up on hats posted stamps balloons all sorts of products to hype the impending games and this these objects range from very small objects all kinds of memorabilia you know things from ash trays and uh furniture or uh apparel all the way to the uh stadiums stadiums across the city were painted with these radiating up art patterns bright colors。

decorated sidewalks and walls and plazes and these bright hypnotic designs didnges give the Olympic Games of visual coherence the graphic design language of the Olympics expanded into an entire system that helped visitors navigate the massive Metropolis to do this winmen made simple color coded icons to represent every sporting event they were not stickfigues。

but they were they were focused more on you know a part of the body or peace of the equipment or combination of the two gymnasics for example。

was represented by a hand gripping a single suspended ring trackingfieldheadsicon boxingheaditsycon so on the ticket you knew what your ticket was for by the icon only so fear visiting from Japan it didnt speak any Spanish youd see say the socker icon on a green background and heed follow the green signed to the Stadium where the socker would be and this system wasnt just for sports weiming in the team made universally understandable icons for nineteen cultural events happening around the city as well。

we had childrens painting， we had folk dancing。

we had a science programming byfollowing these cultural icons visitors could continue to entertain themselves explore the city after the spording events were over the 1968 Olympics had been decreed los wegles still apaas the games of peace soymen designed a little outline of a dove， which shop owners all over the city were given to stickin their windows between the logo。

the typeface， the colors。

the icons and the doves wymen created a visual identity that saturated the whole city it was everywhere it was a total design campaign total design campaign right this the idea total design that every single thing idea place object associated with Olympics is immediately and powerfully recognizes part of a whole and the completeness of the campaign would set a president for years to come i think is safe to say that although design and architecture and the arts in general had been very powerfully associated with a Olympics before Mexico sixty eight its really after Mexico sixty that it becomes a kind of standard expectation of design campaigns associated with these kinds of events while Lance Weiman was designing this extensive campaign he was hold up swamges work。

and he really didnget a chance to go out much no to the grindstone really almost through the whole thing uh we were pretty isolated at the Olympic community。

the movement was led by students who believed the longruling institutional revolutionary party catered to wealthy Mexicans rather than the poor rural and working class the country had been experiencing huge economic growth。

but millions of people had been left behind the Mexican miracle hadnreached everyone the government was stuck in of the Mexican medical even though in the reality of those days， things were not as happy as they appeared theser excerpsfrom interviews with students involved in the protests against mexcos single party government courtesy of her friends and radio diaries in the sixties we were still accounted with the government control everything switch the quivalent of monarks i mean it was for a reason to demonstrate you could not go and express your descent and for the students protesting the government meant protesting against the Olympics themselves the so called games of peace Olympics are i think maybe by design by definition？

always about propaganda on some level or another and so what the Olympics thought to present as a kind of happy picture of social harmony， and as a kind of very sanitized idea of how modernization happens was of course。

not the reality of what many of these inhabitants of the city experienced tens of thousands of protesters took to the states repeatedly throughout 1968 we were orban middle class low middle class bunch of young people it was in a symbolic way the clash of a new Mexico and a normal Mexico you have the middle class and ice closed and a group of students saying this was not a democracy and this is not working again and again please have come out and violently dispersed protesters with clouds of tier gas as the Olympics neared and as international attention turned towards Mexico City the government was desperate to make the unrust go away on October second。

just ten days before the games of peace for set to begin thousands of students gathered at thata local square in the northeast of Mexico City to demand the release of people who had been locked up at a previous protest。

it was a quiet gathering of people with signs walking slowly around the plaza and we look back and there was all this infantry trips they started to advance towards a crowd and at some point we heard some shots we didnknow where they came from and seconds later how do you say in English all help problems！

soldiers opened fire on the protesters to this day we dont know exactly how many students died in the massacre。

but the number is likely in the hundreds of peaceful demonstration the army was circling this plaza call the plaza the three calls the scene was cleared before there could be an accurate bodycount the blood was washed away thousands of protesters were rested unlocked up the government took great pains to cover their tracks the amount of students were shot uh and many of others were imprisoned uh for quite some time was you know， covered up the government claimed that the students had fired first to provoke the military evidence has since come to light that disproves i claim！

its extremely shocking event uh for a long time kind of suppressed in in mexic national memory in in many ways， it is the the crocs of the crisis that uh sets the stage for the in a very very dramatic sense for the Olympics themselves the massacre was so horribly devastating that of course。

lance weimanhearted about it when i heard about it and what how severit was it was difficult situation because i felt that was working for the government and i couldndo anything about it but he says he really empitized with the students i wasnmuch older than they were so i i had that feeling that i， i， i， i， i would mightve felt good！

i just walked away from the whole thing weiman felt stockin the middle， but in a way。

he didnt need to choose between the government and the protesters his designs found a way to serve both sides students began imitating vimesimages and coopting them they took a poster he made with a sillided image of runners， racing and turned it into silhouetsofs beading people with batons they used to signature typography to create antigovernment posters and that very simple image of a dove in all the shoppwindows， students went around the city spring a small burst of bright red paint over the doves chest like it had been shot they were playing with the propaganda of the Olympics and hinting at a darker。

political reality and women he liked it he made a design campaign so ubiquitous so resonant that the resistance could use it to and ivoice been questioned what why do you feel good about that and i guess thats why because i was in the situation where i was kind of torn i was very sympathetic as far as what was happening to the students。

but i was also very not wanting to see the Olympics be stopped and they werent stopped on October 121968 the games began on schedule as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened or said the octovy there jo the cloud in the good others lost because the metric on。

the 1968 Olympics went on a become one of the most important inhistory of the games marketnolyby athletic achievement but by open political defiance do you think you represented all black athletes in doing this uh？

i can say i representa black America and very proud to be a black man and also to have want to go Melo？

Mexico 68 also set a new president for how governments would use design to promote their countries image to the international community forbetter or forworse the 6A games also left a permanent mark on Mexico cities infrastructure。

Mexico City is one of the largest cities in the world its the largest Metropolton area in North America around 4 point 4 million people ride on Mexico cities metrial system every day including producer clearmoment who visited a couple months ago im in the metro um on the pink line at quota mock um！

which has an eagle icon Mexico cities metrio is incredibly crowded and very extensive。

and yet it is often recognized as one of the easiest railsystems to navigate partly because of its econography la catholica？

which is a big ship it looks like a pirate ship without the pirate symbol， and then we have merce said where there are six apples in a create and those icons are there thanks import to lance weighmen。

the metrial was supposed to make its day build during the Olympics， but excavators kept on earning ancient architecture in the path， the tracks and the opening was delayed， but weighmen was still involved in its design。

specifically its map he employed the same visual system he developed for the Olympics to help international visitors navigate the trains in the Olympics we relied on the graphics and i thought well why can a city do that so i mined color coded each line and created a unique icon for every single stop so even if youvisitingfromjapan and cant read any Spanish？

it all you consider yourself i want to take the pinkline to the stop with the grasshopper on it the station that stopped at a chapoltapec park uh chapoltapec means grasshopper hill in the nonwhale to the astic language。

so i used a grasshopper again some Mexicans took issue with this youngforner coming in to design something that would be such a huge part of their city but eventually， Mexican designers took up the project and made it their own you know i design the first three lines of the metro and all the they have twelflines now and they were designed by Mexican designers and some of these are better than ited on the original line after the Olympics after the metro wyman did some more work from Mexico like the design for the nineteen seventy world cup but he went back to the us weimeanwent onto design more maps big ones like for the nationalzhou and the dc metros system although none of them used symbols and icons and colors as completely as in Mexico City。

the clear econography of the metrial system is a reminder of a complicated and sometimes terrible period in Mexico cities history， its a simple design that invite you to explore them massive and complex Metropolis its a design that asshozzy that if you get lost no matter where youre from or what language you speak， you can find your way around and see the city for yourself。

after the breakin Olympic road， not taken， olybit games seem almost timeless going back to ancient Greece so it can be easy to forget that the modern games as we know them today were only launched just over a sentry ago last week we heard about firefighting and tuggewar， which i toggle were has to come back in the olyfax， i mean i think this might be my new missionin life but what about Olympic poetry hertclose did told us about it back in twenty twenty one？

to get things started Roman im Gonna have you read the first Stanza of a poem its titled old disport and it was rden in 126 years after the first bonus， Ola big games OK！

here goes oh sport pleasure of the gods essence of life you appeared suddenly in the mits of the grey clearing， which rise with the drudgery of modern existence like the radiant messenger of a past age when mankind still born and the glimmer of dawn lit up the mountain tops and flex of light dotted the ground in the gloomy forest well！

done that was actually what so what other than them having a really dim view of the modern condition um what what what is that poem about see its not just any poem its an Olympic poem and i dont mean that its a poem about the Olympics i mean it literally won an Olympic gold metal for it literature OK？

OK， i mean i dont know about everysward in the Olympics。

but im pretty sure the literature is not one that im familiar with it all yeah youright it nobody is today for the most part but for decades the Olympic Games actually did include competitions that fell under these five main artistic categories and one of those was literature。

and so because i only think of them as sporting events and the cataloounds and pen tap lawns how did literature find its way into the Olympics well。

it started with this a person who was broadly credited with launching the modernics Pierre de couperton， and heis this fraterist crap who advocated for， and then ultimately organized the international olybic committee， which is still around today， so hes at the forefront of Olympics in general， and that committee decided to host the very first modern international Olympics in 1960， and they choose Athens as the host city， which was of course a nod to the ancient greecolibics， so the first modern games in Athens they did both feature like sports and arts like that well not quite yet that the very first set games but was basically what you expect it had sports like swimming and waitlifting and fencing but then after weve had a couple of good successful games also dark around sports kuberton sprung this idea on the ioc in 1906 he basically was like here we go like why dont we also add these arts categories Ive been thinking about and those were architecture literature， music？

painting and sculpture architecture now were cooking our gas here right？

okay you going then so these architect and other artist participating in this new quota on of the muses enquote were supposed to be amatures much like their counter parts competing on the sportsite it all seems like a pretty big departure from you what i think of as the h interolympics were those always underround sports to mean they they were for the most part uh， but there were some internal libit competitions for music or singingor even uh whatcalled herelding， which i gather just involve announcing things really loudly i dont know um until coupertend kind of referred to that in his arguments for uh including the arts， the Monoolybase， and he wrote quote in the high times of Olympia， the fine arts were combined harmoniously with the Olympic Games to create their glory this is to become reality once again in quote， but can i find this part strange for some reason all these artistic entries were also supposed be related to sports？

which i mean that the post you had me read at the top was was was like that it was about sports i mean i， i dont know if like if youre judging all poems equally if one about sports would necessarily when the gold metal， but when it comes to poems in the Olympics during this era， they had to be about swards crash yeah！

exactly um so it was kind of limiting um and into in the room of architecture for example， contenders submitted stufflike athleticstudioms and sporting complexes and playing fields and swimming pools and even ski jumps and some of those pieces were cool you know published during the Olympics like thats where they can a first appeared。

but others were actually built structures like out in the world so they were judging actual built structures its not just like how did you bring your building to Athens like how did that work right？

so in those cases whether or not the thing was built they relied on renderings um but there were exceptions so in the nineteen twenty eight games an Amsterdam there was this Dutch architect who won the gold metal for the stadium that was being used in those Olympics？

talk about a homefield advantage right？

i mean it it does seem like it being there um maybe could scale the judges a little bit uh but the crazy thing is like by this time there were a lot of submissions like that year then there were over a thousand works of art submitted in all these different categories well， its kind of amazing to me that there was a sprative time where there are that many submissions and was that big a part of the games but no one knows about this period of time you look extreme right i i infer it like i didnt either i mean you know i went the architecture school you think that they should they would teach you about the architectural Olympics um but now the kind of faded for memory but for a long time they were really a big deal and the ioc even got to the point of adding new subcategories within the arts like orchestra in dramatic works， even town planning and so these creative competitions group popular and once side effect was that they started to naturally join people who were more like aspiring professionals and even veteran creatives and some of these participating artists were even selling their artworks during the games what that seems to be somewhat in the violation of the spirit of the games you know just a to use it as a showcase for selling your work its like its like a big gallery show right i if the act of being in the games turns you from an imager to a professional， then uh that make things kind of complicated it does an and really this idea of amatarism was something that the ioc was pushing more and more as time when on we were getting into the nineteen forties so the arts became this natural target right like it was the obvious thing that was like not being quite as amateur as everybody thought it would be um and frankly you know this amecher focus to begin with was a bit of a stretch for the arts and that architect to one the award for building that only extendium like obviously he was in an amateur right？

yeah！

you can host the Olympic Games on an amateur stadium you know， like with amecher adherence to building guidelines for right？

right， just like a rough， a rough scheduven idea you know， its still be fine and and there were other problems to like some artists didnt want to participate because they might lose and that could damage their reputation and then you know as you mentioned before its like this sports focus was pretty limiting and so eventually after the London games in 48 the IOC just discontinue the arts competitions all together and now theres this thing called the cultural olympiad， which is separate um but really like the main events and the metals are for sports i mean thats stunning to me that last until nineteen forty eight。

so that means that theres like a stretch of like thirty years or more where um there were these artistic metal winners like oh other anybody that i would know of in that cohort you know most of them arent famous people uh uh for better for words like the ones i actually find most interesting are these like like ways in。

which they kind of like pushed the idea of the Olympics or like things that that like set unusual records so for example， there is this olympian in nineteen who want a metal for swimming， while he also want a metal for sculpture like to me， thats really cool like， thats like wow， thats really the liberal arts of competition right you can like when you art in sports， and then there is this winner in the arts who was seventy three years old when one you know， we think of Olympic contenders being pretty young but its like any arts really any any age can apply and didnt theres kuberteon himself who won a gold metal in an art category in the nineteen twelve parasks waitsecond i mean he helps jump start the Olympics like sort of the founder the modern Olympics！

and then he competed in the Olympics yes！

yes， he did and he won his award for literature or more specifically poetry did you write that poem at the top that you made me read thats the one kubertesubmitted it under a sudenam anyonethegold well im sure theres nothing fishy going on there no not a dollar， not a dollar and you know i mean the there is this possibility that he submitted it because he wanted to make sure all the art categories were represented you know the first year that the arts were included， but obviously i mean i cant help but wonder if he was secretly harboring a second motive， i mean he put a lot in the pitching these arts competitions so you dont maybe just maybe he knew he really couldncompeed on the sportside but you know he wanted this shot at the gold i if there is a podcast Olympics i think get a gold metal i would totally into it right god you could found it and then submit your work to it it be the best love it oh i would really do love it well！

thats so great i want to bring this back i would love to see you know what you know Michael helps could do when it comes to design in a Stadium im right that would be so awesome or how well he can scope i mean i dont know like the possibilities are endless well， i love imagining analytics like that thanks Kirk， 99 percent invisible was produced this week by Clare Moan， average trufflemen and coral costead music by Swan Rio technical production by srefusif， Remix by martinganzalis thanks the team at radio diaries who provided us with some tape from their documentarya movement a massacre and mexicos fifty years search for the truth produced by onions ds cortest the story of the student protest 168 and uncovers a secret behind the governments play crackdown if you havenlisten a radio diaries before， they are probably the best audio documentarians in the business of all time so do yourself a huge favor and go listen catty two is our executive producer delayhall is our senior editor Nike is our intern dorisity team includes crispruby， Jason Dileone， Emitfest Gerald， Chris for Johnson， fivenle Boshmadan， Joe Rosenberg， Gabrielle Gladney， Kelly Pron Jacomultonado Medina， Nina Potik and me Roman Mars the nine percent visible logo was created by Steffen Lawrence we are part of a Stitcher and serious XM Podcast family now headcordent six blocks north in the pandorhabuilding in beautiful Uptown， Oakland， California birthplace of comleahorus you can find us on all the usual social media sites， as well as are discord server there are over 45 people there talking about the power broker， talking about architecture， talking about all kinds of things podcast they recommend its just a great place to be theres a link to that as well as every passed episode of 99 pi at ninety nine pi dot work。