Lance Wyman is the mastermind behind the superlative ‘68 Mexico Olympic branding system in addition to a hundred other logos you’ve probably seen, but never attributed to Wyman (or maybe you have and I’m a crowd of one).
I’ve never seen a full exploration of the concepts and applications Wyman’s team created for the project, so when I ran across the examples on his website (shown above) I was amazed at how many different applications there were and how the letterforms grew and morphed into a pattern of geometric shapes with the logo almost but not quite illegible. A brief search on google, amazon, et all… and I couldn’t find any books on Wyman’s work or the ‘68 Olympics branding. There should be (if there’s not already) some kind of definitive, impressive tome on this subject, if not in english then at least in spanish as the logo is still as relevant and venerated as it ever was, reappearing constantly by reference in modern Mexican pop culture.
Here’s a fascinating interview with Wyman from Eye Magazine. He delves into the logo’s dual inspirations - native Huichol art and Op art. OpArt which was coming on strong internationally and Huichol art which was just starting to be embraced and exhibited in Mexico. The Mexico 68 Olympics logo was a melding of these two seemingly diametrically opposed arts, that ended up working together pretty superfluously.
Incidentally, Creative Review asked Wyman what his thoughts are regarding the London 2012 Olympics logo:
“The London 2012 logo has been presented with promising descriptive text but besides the date, I don’t think the logo itself attempts to reference anything of significance,” he says. “It has certainly aroused a lot of critical references, from grade school paper cuts to porno.
“My gut feeling though is to give the logo a chance, he continues. “It has a recognisable, brash character and might offer an open book of application possibilities that will keep it fresh into 2012.
More on Lance Wyman and larger images from the Mexico 68 Olympics series at Web Esteem Mag.
[via TypeNeu]
Actually, the Mexico 68 design concept was a team effort, headed up by Eduardo Terrazas. Wyman was simply one designer of many, and certainly not the team leader. There is an upcoming catalogue for the current exhibition “Mexico 68″ at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City which clarifies this confusion. (September 2008)