Customer Reviews

A Century of Olympic Posters

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It took some years for the Olympic rings to make an appearance on a poster. Hugo Laubi designed one for the 1928 Winter Olympics at Saint Moritz where the rings appeared for the first time on a white flag. They had been around since 1912 when Pierre de Coubertin thought of the design. The interlocking circles have to be one of the world's great logos, simple, elegant and recognized everywhere.

Since 1928 the rings appear on most Olympic posters, either as part of the design or discretely as part of the capitol and country text, usually at the bottom of the sheet. I doubt it could get any smaller than for the Sydney 2000 games, small enough to miss completely. Oddly, I thought, there are no posters in the book with the logo as the totally dominant theme of a poster. The nearest use like this is the Montreal 1976 one designed by Ernst Roch and Rolf Harder. The poster looks wonderful with the rings having a slightly pulsating look on a white background.

Margaret Timmers knows her stuff because she has written a very knowledgeable and comprehensive survey of the games and each poster. The 150 in the book take the story right up to date with the London 2012 logo as the last one. I don't think it's until the sixties that the poster designs start to be vibrant and exciting. Yusaku Kamekura's stunning sprint start photo for Tokyo 1964 games maybe inspired other designers to come up with great designs in the following decades. I always wonder if the bureaucracy of the IOC stifles creativity, they have to please and not offend anyone.

I thought this was an interesting and thorough book that'll interest designers and others who work in an international graphics arena.

***LOOK INSIDE THE BOOK by clicking 'customer images' under the cover.

I collect various Olympic items including Olympic Posters. This is a good introduction of Olympic Posters.