Freeday | Tokyo Olympics

Hello friends,

There was no clear plan for what this post was going to be about, but for the sake of the blog I managed to rummage something interesting together. If you've been following my commission journey for the Musicks in Japan, you would be aware that I've been deep in the trenches finessing my typography skills. To expand my practice even further, I often extrapolate ideas from paths that are often unusable for a particular project, but still manage to be interesting enough to warrant development for other purposes. That so happened to be the case for the image below.

As I was trying to resolve organization and typesetting issues for the Musicks in Japan logo, specifically for the word "Japan", I came across a neat idea. By pushing the vowels back in space, outlining them through the shadows of the consonants, I could make the abbreviation of JPN clearly legible with my own unique font. However, aside from being a cool design, there wasn't much purpose behind this idea, so I left it sit in the recesses of my mind until I finished my commission. Thankfully, I like to be as resourceful and intuitive as possible with all my designs to maximize the potential from the tiniest of sketches. I figured whatever the end goal would be for this idea, it would have to be timely in its content and execution.

Over the past few years, talks about the Tokyo 2020 Olympic games have been the center of conversation, an inescapable fact of life here. Unfortunately, a lot of people have become quite disillusioned by the whole idea and aren't really looking forward to the event, despite what the media publishes. Therefore, I decided to do the opposite and look back at the 1964 games. For whatever reason, people don't seem to acknowledge the history the Olympics has in Japan, preferring to focus exlusively on next years games. With that in mind, I continued developing my sketches in a way that could incorporate these ideas but kept a strong focus on type.

I think the first inclination some novice designers have when implementing their designs onto products would be to use a t-shirt or a mug. However, not all designs are suitable for all products and vice-versa. I felt this route would cheapen my design, so it didn't take me very long to move away from this idea and consider more sophisticated options. Considering the refined and elegant nature of my wordmark, I figured mocking-up a commemorative postage stamp would be the most ideal option.

Keeping with the time period represented, I chose a retro color scheme and a vintage finish that would allow the graphic to pay homage to that era's design sensibilities. Simultaneously, I think the final product still has an air of modernity considering the color vibrancy, economy of space, and font choice. What do you guys think? What other sporting events should I explore in the future? FIFA? Rugby? Baseball? Leave your thoughts in the comments below. As always, don't forget to like and share this post~

Until next time,
Peace