oaxaca olympics
Ticket design, app prototype, lower thirds, transition pages, color palette, logo mark, iconography, and hero animation for 2040 Olympics hosted in Oaxaca, Mexico.
The final product was presented as a pitch deck, here I’ve only included some of the slides. I am currently revisiting the work and plan to record a presentation that shows the research behind all of my design decisions, but here are the key points.
The use of stripes is paying homage to the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. During which Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised black-gloved fists while on the podium that Smith refers to in his autobiography as a “human rights” salute. America had recently passed the Civil RIghts Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, making significant but not final steps in the fight for equality.
The 1968 Miss America protest and further research into protests and the history of a raised fist being a symbol of unity inspired the logomark. Research into the Zapotec culture of Oaxaca and muxe identity inspired me to broaden the mission of the branding system to speak against gender discrimination. These two topics were the inspiration for using a pink and blue color palette (traditionally gendered colors) in a way that pointedly doesn’t use them as indicators for sex or gender.
The Olympics unifies the world and provides oppurtunity for cultures to influence one another. Tommie Smith and John Carlos were booed as they walked away from the podium on October 16th, 1968. The 2040 Oaxaca Olympics systems is rooted in visuals that address topics where people have had to protest for acceptance of their identity whether it’s in race, gender, sex, body size, national origin etc.