6 Design Secrets in the Beijing Winter Olympics 2022

Discover how architects, designers, and illustrators have weaved Chinese cultural heritage into their creations

The Winter Olympics are a chance for the host country to show the rest of the world just who they are, through design, cuisine, architecture, art, and music. But in order to discover the cultural stories that inform their designs, sometimes you need to take a closer look…

A lot of thought goes into every aspect of the games, from huge projects like constructing transport links and building stadiums, to the smaller details, like designing medals and mascots. Top Chinese designers, illustrators, and architects were chosen to make their contributions to the games. Every medal engraving, architectural line, and color is filled with meaning and cultural significance.

To find out what the meaning is behind the medals, why the torches are that shape, or how the pictograms relate to ancient Chinese history, keep on reading.

Medals

Look closely at the Beijing 2022 medals, and you will see that they comprise five concentric rings and a center. They were designed with ancient Chinese pendants in mind that were buried alongside the dead in the belief that they would help immortalize the soul. These pendants date back to the Western Han Dynasty (206BC-24AD), and they were made out of jade, since this popular Chinese stone represented nobility and peace.

The five concentric rings within the medal represent the Olympic rings, which have been engraved with clouds, snow, and ice, and the concave design mirrors that of the ancient jade pendants.

Ice Ribbon Arena

The National Speed Skating Oval, also known as the Ice Ribbon, was unveiled in January. Designed by the global sports architecture firm Populous, its inspiration came from an old children's game and ancient Chinese paintings.

Tiric Chang, Principal of Populous in China, said that his creation of the skating oval stemmed from two childhood memories. One was a game he used to play as a child in Beijing, called "ice spinning top". It involved a high-speed spinning top that, Chang said, “seemed to have infinite energy and possibilities.”

And the ribbon-like, flowing design of the Oval was inspired by ancient Chinese art. Chang had been mesmerized by his family’s preservation work of the Dunhuang Grottoes. These grottoes contained wall paintings of flying apsaras (female spirits of the clouds)—flying not with wings, but colorful silk ribbons.

The Torch

Designed by Li Jianye, the red and silver torch was even given a name: Flying. And the number of cultural elements that are hidden in the design, may just surprise you.

Firstly, the color: red is considered a highly auspicious color in China, and you will find the color red in many more design elements of the Olympic games than the torch alone. The red and silver together form a metaphor around fire and ice, fitting for the Winter Olympics.

The curvilinear shape of the torch reflects a multitude of elements, which include the long and winding Great Wall of China, the swirling tracks in the snow left by skiers, and the curling stems of budding plants. The red also fades into the silver by way of small swirling patterns and snowflakes, reminiscent of the Chinese art of paper cutting.

Li Jianye’s final touch was creating a torch that could interlock with other torches in the same way as a handshake, to reflect the sense of cooperation that is intrinsic in a relay race.

Pictograms

A new set of pictograms—graphics that represent ideas or data—is created for every Olympic Game. The Olympics uses these pictograms to represent each sport. Although these pictograms are mainly an important communication tool, they also offer designers room for creativity, and every Olympics designer uses these pictograms as an opportunity to demonstrate something of the host country’s culture.

For the Winter Olympics 2022, the design group led by Lin Cunzhen based the pictograms on traditional Chinese seal engravings. Each pictogram represents a sport and is made up of unique strokes, like those carved by knives onto the seal stamps from the Qin and Han dynasties thousands of years ago.

Check out this article to find out more about pictograms and the Olympics.

Logo

If you’ve been watching the Winter Olympics, you will have seen this logo everywhere. So what does it mean? Chinese designer Lin Cunzhen has succeeded in fitting multiple meanings into this single design.

Firstly, the logo is inspired by the Chinese character for winter 冬 (dong). But if you look carefully, you will see that Lin has built a skater into this Chinese character at the top, and a skier below. The ribbon-like effect of the strokes gives a nod to the ancient Chinese art of ribbon dancing, as well as symbolizing China’s mountainous landscape.

The colors are no mistake either. The blue palette is fitting in portraying ice and snow, while Lin brought the Chinese flag into the symbol with the red and yellow.

Mascot

You can’t talk about Olympic design without mentioning the Olympic mascot (and if you want to find out the stories behind the most iconic mascots, head to this post). For the 2022 Beijing Olympics, it’s perhaps no surprise that China’s national animal—the panda—was chosen. Called Bing Dwen Dwen (“Bing” meaning ice and “Dwen Dwen” meaning children in Chinese), the panda was the creation of illustrator and designer Cao Xue.

But this panda looks like it’s dressed up in some kind of icy space suit—why? According to the International Olympic Committee, this futuristic look is a “tribute to embracing new technologies for a future with infinite possibilities”. Similarly, the neon colors around the panda’s face also represent the advance of technology, and the hearts in the panda’s paws are meant to symbolize China’s hospitality for athletes and spectators.

The panda was chosen out of 5,800 submissions for the Olympic mascot and has already proved a hit with spectators, with people queuing up for hours to buy merchandise featuring the chubby panda.

Did you enjoy learning about the secret stories behind deceptively simple designs? Then you may be interested in the intriguing history of logos.

Or if you're interested in learning how to create your own designs, check out online graphic design courses.

You may also like:

- What is Design Process and Why is it Important?
- The Expert: Sagi Haviv
- Iconic Buildings Around the World and the Stories Behind Them
- Logo Design: From Concept to Presentation, a course by Sagi Haviv