Print Design, Motion Graphic Design, Web Design
TEGNA: 2022 Winter Olympics Branding
MULTIMEDIA DESIGN
2021-2022
Myself / Jeremy Carlisle / Dakota Hitt / Collin White
2022 Viddy Awards Platinum Winner: Sizzle Reel
Color & Logo
How is color used throughout the brand package? What is the mood and how is it utilized?
The 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing is coming fast after the 2020(1) Summer Olympics. With an event as large as the Olympics, stations all across Tegna's network require high scaled graphics for broadcasting the events, promoting sales and clients during the event, and to share stories across every station - whether they be personal stories of triumph or investigative stories on the national teams. An event of this size required an abundance of graphics of several different media that were designed into one cohesive brand look - of which stations can then be able to create their own graphics. From videos to be aired on broadcast, to social stills helping to inform audiences of the medal count, the Beijing 2022 graphics package was one of the biggest projects I worked on in 2021.
Our initial mocks and looks for this design were focused heavily on a wintery feel and overall look. We had to make sure that our Beijing 2022 package differed drastically from our Tokyo 2020 package, since they would be running consecutively with little time for audiences to breathe. Our Tokyo look was full of warm colors and bold summer vibes.
We began with a color palette and logo design. Our color palette consisted of mostly shades of blue and white, for a cooler winter feel, with a bright pop of orange in order to break up the monotonous tone of the palette. The orange was to be using sparingly and as an accent, never a main color choice.
Color Palette:
Second color
choice after
white
Main blue for
color and
backgrounds.
Not for text.
Only used in
moderation
and accent.
Not for text.
Logo
FULL COLOR
WHITE
Initial Style Designs
Our initial designs utilized the middle blue tones of our palette and had more orange incorporated into every aspect of the image. We were branding it as bold and bright, when winter typically gets muted or monotone color designs, so we went into these first designs trying to amplify the mood of winter and bring excitement with the pops of dark blue and orange color tones. Overall, though, we felt that this design still didn't feel as if we were talking about the winter olympics. It feel too vibrant and overly saturated. With that thought in mind, we dialed back on the saturation and limited our usage of certain colors. We also incorporated white into the design more, as snow is a huge part of every winter sport. We also limited the use of orange to be a color enhancer and draw attention to the design when we chose to use it.
Secondary Designs
Illustrations
In addition to colors, logos and design, we wanted to utilized animated illustration to further bring our designs to life.
These designs were closer to our final design. However, we played with the idea of using animated illustrative characters without our package to portray the different sports. Initially we were photography and footage heavy, but one of the team members is an incredible illustrator and we played with the idea of animating characters in their appropriate sport. The goals for these characters were to be as unbiased as possible, meaning they weren't gender specific, race-specific or even ethnicity specific, but could still be identified as people and what sport they were doing.
Jeremy, our illustrator, worked completely on all the character and background illustration designs. He came up with several different sports that we could use in our story opens/opening stingers and use throughout the entire Beijing package. He also completed a couple Great Wall of China animations that we could use as backgrounds instead of photography. In the end, these illustrations became a staple of the Beijing package and was used in nearly every aspect, or were used a guide for adding other illustrations. Such as for the Torch relay I designed an illustration of the torch being lit, and we also designed the medals.
Illustrations
Final Design
A mixture of cool blue tones under uniquely fun illustrations, photography and footage to get people excited about the Winter Olympics.
With the addition of these illustrations we reworked some of our designs until we landed on our final design. There was less overall white in the designs to make sure the figures were able to stand out against the background. We kept the backgrounds with varying blue tones to help with dimension and kept the orange to a minimal use as we did before. We also softened out some of the harsh edges in our original designs and added more curves into the geometric look.
Many our our video elements were illustration focused, but with a time crunch and an understanding of the workload we also incorporated how photography and footage should be composited to match our look. We also combined illustration and photography as to merge both assets of our package into one cohesive design.
Amongst several other assets the biggest timeline factors were the One Year Out package, Six Months Out package, 100 Days Out package and the overall Beijing to use after the 100 days out and throughout the actual games. We were able to lock down a design on the Six Months Out package and did very little editing to the remaining packages, other than edit to add assets.
Finalized Packages
Final Beijing Package
City to Beijing Map
Beyond just the general Beijing package for news stations to use on-air during the games for stories/coverage, there were a lot of additional video assets, graphic assets for social media and web, templates that stations can edit when it comes to medal counts or athlete biographies and interviews. These assets were a mixture of photography focused, with some illustration design, but overall due to limited space the main focus was to get the content on the design and then add in a cohesive design. We also kept these design more minimal so that stations would be able to edit and alter them without breaking the Beijing branding, or going off course.
Animated Backgrounds
Video Assets
Social Media
Sales Assets
In junction with broadcast video elements, social and print assets, the team created several sponsored videos for the marketing department to sell.
Sponsored programs are a great opportunity between clients and companies to build a relationship in the broadcast industry. We created several graphics for broadcast that can be pitched to potential clients who would like to buy a program or spot during the Olympics coverage and have their brand on the program. All of these sales assets are still in the Beijing look that we've established and are just extensions of the graphics already made, in order to build a new segment or program that will excite clients to want to partner with our company.
The sales assets took a lot of trial and error not only to get a look that would fit into our brand, but that would also fit with any client's logo or brand added. These graphics had a little more freedom to the design of them, because they had less of a solid story behind them and relied on the graphics to help sell the idea of the program. Most of these were video assets that would go on air at the local stations, or online.