Olympic Pictograms
The video contains a rich source of information focusing on the whole history of the Olympic pictogram.
Design Production 'Sprint' pictogram.
As you can see the designs may look quite simple but there's always alot of thought and design behind the final products. I need to adopt this approach when designing the theme of my booklet.
How far should technology enhance athletes? Video case study of 'Kelly' a 15 year old who lost her leg through cancer.
Sound clip, Rehabilitation through sport.
Interesting Facts about the Olympics/ Paralympics.
The oldest Olympic medalist was Oscar Swahn of Sweden. In 1908 and 1912 he won three gold and two bronze medals, respectively, in shooting competitions. In the 1920 Games in Antwerp, he received a silver medal at age 72.
Alpine skiing for people with disabilities began to develop after World War II, when wounded soldiers returning from the front wanted to be able to continue their favorite sport. Slalom and giant slalom competitions were included in the first Paralympic Winter Games in 1976. Downhill competitions were held for the first time at the Paralympic Games in Innsbruck in 1984 and super giant was added in 1994 in Lillehammer.
The 2008 Paralympic Games in Beijing became the most representative in the history of the Paralympic Movement: Almost 4,000 athletes from 146 countries competed in these Games.
The ancient Greek philosopher Plato became a two-time Olympic champion in the most severe form of competition - pankration.
The Paralympic Games are the second largest sports competition after the Olympic Games. With each edition, the number of those wishing to compete in the Games gets larger and larger. For example, in 1960 400 athletes from 23 countries participated in the Games. For the 2012 Paralympic Games in London, however, these figures have substantially increased to 4200 athletes from 160 countries. Over the years, the number of Paralympic sport disciplines has grown from 57 to 471.
The tradition of the Olympic Games was revived by Baron Pierre de Coubertin (1863-1937) of France. In 1894, he proposed the Olympic motto “Citius, Altius, Fortius” (“Faster, higher, stronger”), a creation of his friend, Dominican priest Henri Dido. However, this motto only received official status in 1924.
Since 1924, the Winter Games have been held separately from the Summer Games. Until 1992 they were both held in the same year.
The modern marathon distance of 42,195 km was established at the 1908 Olympic Games in London. At the request of the British royal family, arrangements for the marathon were changed several times in order for it to start from the Royal Palace.
The first Paralympic Winter Games took place in 1976 in ?rnsk?ldsvik, Sweden. Track and field competitions were organized for athletes with limb amputations and visual impairments. Additionally, the first showing of ice-sled racing took place during these Games.
The Italian marathon runner Dorando Pietri was the first to cross the finish line on that occasion. At the very end of the race, exhausted from the sweltering heat, he was forced to seek medical help. After much debate, the panel of judges disqualified him for taking outside assistance and American Johnny Hayes was declared Olympic champion. However, at the suggestion of celebrated novelist Arthur Conan Doyle, Queen Alexandra awarded Pietri an honorary gold-plated cup.
Spectators at the events could normally only be free, law-abiding Greek males. The threat of death forbade women to attend the competitions. The only exception was given to the priestesses of the goddess Demeter, for whom a marble throne was built as a place of honour at the stadium.
A year before the Melbourne Olympic Games in 1956, it was found that it would be impossible to hold equestrian sport competitions in Australia because the country had a ban on animal imports. As a result, equestrian events were held in Sweden. This is the only instance where the Olympic Games have been held in two different countries.
There are six official disability groups that make up the Paralympic Movement: athletes with amputations, cerebral palsy, intellectual disabilities, visual impairments and spinal cord injuries, as well as a group including other types of disabilities not covered in the previous five groups.
The first modern Olympic Games were held in Athens in 1896. A Greek athlete who took third place in the marathon was deprived of his award after it turned out that he had ridden in a cart for part of the way.
There is no age limit for Paralympic Games participants. For example, American cyclist Barbara Buken won gold at the Games in Beijing at age 52. Previously, she was a professional athlete and member of the US national team. After an accident on the track, Buken suffered serious injuries and underwent a total of five brain operations. Despite this, the cyclist found the inner strength to return to major sports and compete in the Paralympic Games.
At the III Olympiad in 1904 in St. Louis, after having run about 14 km, American marathon runner Fred Lorts got into a car that was waiting for him. Two km from the finish, he re-entered onto the track and finished first. His cheating was discovered only after he received a gold medal.
The first Paralympic Games were held in 1960 in Rome. At that time, Italy had the largest delegation of athletes. The Games program in Rome consisted of eight sports, including light athletics, swimming, fencing, basketball, archery and table tennis. Participants in these events were athletes with spinal cord injuries.
In the 2004 Athens group synchronized swimming final, the music was switched off twice during the Russian team’s performance. Despite this, the duo of Anastasia Davydova and Anastasia Ermakova still won the gold medal.
The word "Olympics" originally meant not the Games themselves, but the four-year gap between them. The ancient Greeks measured time by each Olympiad starting from 776 B.C. (e.g. "the third year of the 146th Olympiad"). In honour of the Olympic Games, a month-long vow of peace would be proclaimed throughout Greece.
Winners of the ancient Olympic Games known as the “Olympians” were bestowed with olive wreaths and starting from the 6th century B.C., a three-time champion of the Games could put his statue in the sacred grove of Altis.
In the summer of 1913, Emperor Nicholas II appointed Vladimir Voeikov, Commander of Hussar Regiment, Major-General of the Suite, to oversee the physical development of the population of the Russian Empire. This took place after failed performances by Russian athletes at the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm. To develop athleticism amongst the population, the Emperor created Russia's first Olympic Games in the spring of 1913. That same year, the Olympic Games were announced in Kiev. About half of the participants were officers. At the games, only 10 records in light athletics were set in Russia.
During the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, Japanese marathon runner Sitso Kanaguri suffered an unbearable thirst at 30 km. He ran to the nearest house and asked the owner for some water. The Swedish farmer invited the runner into a room, but when he returned, he found his guest sound asleep. Kanaguri slept for more than a day. In 1967, the 76-year-old runner was given the opportunity to run the remaining distance - his total time was 54 years 8 months 6 days 8 hours 32 minutes and 20.3 seconds.
In Sydney in 2000, Eric Moussambani, a swimmer from Equatorial Guinea almost drowned in the 50-meter pool, having learned how to swim only nine months before the Games. Moussambani, however won his qualifying heat in the 100m freestyle because the other two participants were disqualified for a false start.
During the field hockey tournament at the 1908 Olympic Games in London, Great Britain was simultaneously represented by four teams, who shared all the medals amongst each other. "Gold" went to England, "silver" went to Ireland and "bronze" to Scotland and Wales.
The idea behind the Paralympic Games is credited to German neurologist Ludwig Guttmann. In 1948, Guttmann organized a sports competition for World War II veterans at the Center for rehabilitation of patients with spinal cord injuries Stoke-Mandeville Hospital in the UK. By 1953, the number of competitors in the Stoke-Mandeville Games had grown to 130, which attracted the attention of representatives from the Olympic Movement.
The competitions were held in the town of Olympia in the north-west region of the Peloponnese. The Games began on the day of the first full moon after the summer solstice, and lasted for five days.
The Olympic Winter Games were first held in 1924 in France. At that time, under the patronage of the IOC, an "International Sports Week on the Occasion of the VIII Olympic Games” was held in the town of Chamonix, which was supposed to host that year’s Olympic Summer Games. The winter sports competitions created so much interest that it was then decided to hold a Winter Games as well. However, this status was only assigned to them later.
The Olympic Games originated in Ancient Greece. According to tradition, the date of the first competitions considered to be the prototype of the Olympic Games was 776 B.C.
The famous Olympic slogan, "The most important thing is not to win but to take part” is credited to an American, Bishop Albert Talbot of Pennsylvania. He uttered these words during the IV Games while preaching in London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral on July 19, 1908.
At the Olympic Games in Paris in 1900, the first three places in the marathon were taken by the French, even though the American athletes were considered to be the favourites. At the finish, one of the Americans noticed that unlike the rest of the runners, the winners were not dirty at all even though there were large puddles along the way. The French were duly accused of taking advantage of their knowledge of the Paris streets and cutting the route.
The official title of “Paralympic Games” was adopted during the II Paralympiad in 1964 in Tokyo, which included the participation of 390 athletes from 22 countries. Additionally, more sports disciplines were included in the program, particularly wheelchair, weightlifting and discus. These competitions also witnessed the first-ever use of Paralympic attributes: the flag, anthem and symbol of the Games.
At the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris, during the first football match between Uruguay and Yugoslavia, the organizers mistakenly hung the national flag of Uruguay upside down, and instead of the country’s anthem, the musicians performed a dance tune. However, this did not prevent Uruguay from victory and from becoming Olympic champions.
Members of royal families also participated in the ancient Olympic Games. One of the champions was an Armenian prince, Varazdat, who won the boxing competition.
The organizers of the 1896 Games staged heats in Piraeus, the marine harbour of Athens. One participant from America, Gardner Williams, got out of the water immediately after the start. He refused to swim because of the coldness of the water.
In the late 1970s, the monoski was invented for Paralympic skiers, which enabled athletes with locomotor apparatus injuries to take part in alpine skiing. Prior to this invention, only the visually impaired Paralympic athletes could take part in skiing. Monoski competitions among athletes with locomotor apparatus injuries first entered the program during the Nagano Paralympic Games in 1998.
The ancient Olympic Games consisted of only a few types of sports: running, boxing, wrestling, pankration (a blend of boxing and wrestling), pentathlon (running, discus, javelin, long jump, wrestling); and chariot races, including synoris (two horses in harness) and tethrippon (four horses in harness). The ancient athletes competed in the nude in all competitions, with the exception of for chariot races.
On March 16, 1911 in St. Petersburg, representatives of 34 sports associations of Moscow and St. Petersburg established the Russian Olympic Committee. It was headquartered in a former mansion on Sadovaya, which was home to the Imperial Russia Humane Society. Earlier, General Alexei Butovskii made attempts to establish a national Olympic committee. In 1892, during a trip to France, he met a young scholar and sports enthusiast, Baron Pierre de Coubertin. The Baron offered the General an opportunity to become an IOC Member from Russia and received a written agreement two years later.
A few athletes with disabilities enter Olympic competitions. They include 28 year-old South African swimmer Natalie Du Toit, who lost her leg in a car crash and Polish tennis player Natalia Partyka, who has a congenital defect of the right hand. Both participated at the Beijing Olympics. Subsequently, they went on to compete at the Paralympic Games, where each won a gold medal.
Adaptive snowboarding, created by the Canadian Snowboard Federation, is a sport discipline in which the equipment, rules and technical standards are adapted for people with disabilities. The inclusion of adaptive snowboarding in the Paralympic Winter Games program is currently under consideration.
There are people among the Paralympic athletes, who were already heavily involved in sport prior to becoming disabled. One such person is Oleg Kretsul, a professional judoka. In the midst of preparing for the Games in Atlanta, he lost his vision in a car accident. Two years later, Kretsul returned to the tatami mat and competed among athletes with visual impairments. He became world champion, champion of Europe, and a medalist at the Paralympic Games in Athens. At the Paralympic Games in Beijing, Oleg Kretsul won the first gold medal in the history of Russian Paralympic judo.
Russia's athletes took part in the 1908 Olympic Games in London. Of the five athletes, three became Olympic medalists: Nikolai Panin-Kolomenkin won the gold in figure skating and Nikolai Orlov and Andrei Petrov both won the silver medal in Greco-Roman wrestling, in the light and heavyweight divisions, respectively.
The head of the IOC medical commission, Prince Alexandre de M rode called the 1980 Games in Moscow the "most honest". At that time, 9,292 doping tests were administered and none of them showed a positive result.
NEW PROSPECTS FOR PROSTHETICS... http://scienceinsociety.northwestern.edu/content/articles/2009/kuiken/new-prospects-for-prosthetics
The 'Lexi Decoder'
Channel 4 introduces ‘Lexi Decoder' (LEXI) a revolutionary new graphical system which aims to aid the viewing experience of this summer's Paralympic Games by debunking the often confusing classifications that govern Paralympic sport.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Bob Hall - A pioneer of Wheelchair racing. (The Boston Marathon)
Dr Ludwig Guttmann - Creator and Founder of the Paralympics and it's concept of rehabilitation through sport.
As a form of primary research I decided to watch various Paralympic games events live on TV. I thought this would help me visually see how far the Paralympics has developed in terms of its; Audience, Technology, No. of athletes attending, Graphic representations i.e. Lexi Decoder...
Stoke Mandeville, the birthplace of the Paralympics
Olympic Pictogram Poster by Graphic Designer, Katie Kuehl.
The Modern Games, an interactive timeline displaying the highlights and histories of the Olympic games from 1900 - 2012.
This video shows a rich history in a very easy and accessible way, however most of the information I've seen on this interactive timeline, wasn't so unique, although its serving its purpose, I could of easily found the information somewhere else...which I did. I read up on books such as '100 Greatest Olympians and Paralympians' which gave a deep insight into each Paralympians career highlights etc.
As a form of research I rented various books and photographed various pages that I thought would help my investigation, as oppose to the internet, the information was much more accessible because of the books contents etc. (the whole range of books rented can be seen in my development book)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Articles/ Opinions/ Discussions.
Questionnaire
After review of my research I wanted to gain an insight into what other people knew about the Paralympics without any prior research, If there was enough feedback on my questionnaire I'd be able to use the results as influence for the content of my work.
I was quite disappointed with the range of respondents, however the results do have some validity, as you can see from question four, 50% of respondents said that they thought the games originated in Greece, when in-fact it was Britain (RESPONSE COUNT 0). Although it originates in Britain, the course of history may be different if it wasn't for the Ancient Greek Olympics.
I really want to produce a greek inspired publication because I could still make it obvious that it originated in Britain through the aspects of my design. E.G. BRITISH RED CROSS.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I also tried generating another Survey to publish using a website that's mainly for market research and pinpointing your target market. However this time round I was taking a much different approach to my questionnaire I wanted to use closed ended questions and gain perspectives on how I should design my publication...
The questions were as follows...
Leave your comment