OUGD 505 - Design production 2

The Winter Olympics

I have chosen to go with a topical subject for this project, I find something fascinating about the winter olympics. I think mainly its the beautiful setting that its usually in or it could be the fact that every event is so much more dangerous than the summer olympics. The first winter olympics I actually started watching was 4 years ago in Vancouver so i'm relatively new to the idea of it. Ever since I was younger I have been lucky enough to be taken away to go skiing each year, I feel this factor really boosts my interest in all the winter sports. I have noticed, although interest has grown each year that there are far less people watching the winter olympics than the summer olympics. I think this mainly comes down to a few aspects.
Great britain doesn't feature too heavily in many of the events, this is down to our smaller team and the fact we come from a country that doesn't have many facilities or mountains our athletes can practice on.
unlike the summer olympics where we have a much larger team we feature in many more of the events.
Watching the games recently I have noticed something lacking in many of the events, its the competitiveness of it. Many of the events aren't head to head and are timed instead which makes not as good for viewing. Some events are head to head like the speed skating, Boarder cross and even the curling, which has apparently been the most tweeted sport of this winter games. This fact isn't too strange considering Great britain has been playing nearly every day in the qualifying rounds.

In therms of athletes in the winter games I feel they equal if not surpass any other athletes in the world, the conditions are more extreme and the endurance is more in many cases. danger is another factor, most of the sports in the games has a degree of risk from the highly risky slopestyle to the less risky biathlon, compared to the summer games there is nothing that carries a similar amount of danger.

For my research iv'e been looking at some of the old photos from the winter games, seeing some of the old technology is really fascinating, and it is interesting to see how far the games have actually come.

For this project I would like to create an introduction to the winter olympics, I might broaden this beyond winter olympics and use winter sports, I feel both have rich histories that many people are unaware of. I feel until I properly define a concept I could do a project under the different options for this brief.
A brief history of...
A collection of...
An introduction to...
Things you need to know about...
An exhibition of...

I feel an introduction too would be ideal at the moment down to the fact of the growing popularity of the winter games people would naturally want to know more. My initial ideas for this would be to create a publication including interesting facts and information about past and present olympic games. this concept is adaptive and I know over the course of this brief my ideas will change and im sure my subject matter might even adapt to a different thing.

I have been looking at a lot of old poster recently in this instance I have been looking at old winter games posters. They bare a strong resemblance to old ski resort posters but this is an understandable comparison. 

One of the posters for the current Sochi games still has quite an old school theme, which I like the fact that it shows some kind of heritage. For my publication Its possible that I could do a brief history of the winter olympics, the thing that im most attracted to is the marketing, in particular the older posters that I have given examples of above. If I were to focus on this specific aspect I could go down the route of an exhibition of or a collection of which personally appeals to me more.

These posters are all the ones ever created from the winter games, aside from the most recent sochi one. I like seeing the first poster differs quite dramatically from the most recent one. although there are similarities between all of them, strong lines and bold colours seem to be a theme running throughout, these aspects can even be see in the first posters. I like the fact that the posters really define the eras very well you can see a very typically 90's style in the French and the Lillehammer posters.

All of the posters are listed here with a brief explanation, something I would like to recreate in a more informed way.
Winter Games Posters