Min Wang
1956
Active since 1984
Min Wang is the Design Director for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, a position to which he was appointed in 2006. Since 2003, he has also been Dean of the School of Design, at China Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing. At that time, he created a unique working group in the Art Research Centre for the Olympic Games (ARCOG) at the China Central Academy of Fine Arts. Under his leadership, the centre's design teams, including CAFA students, have developed an elegant and comprehensive design system for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. Their work includes the athletic pictographic symbols, the Beijing Games emblem and their applications. All of these efforts address design planning through the development of extensive design standards manuals for the Beijing 2008 Olympics, and reaffirm the Olympic spirit and significance of this international multi-sporting event.
Wang's efforts, and those of his design teams at the Art Research Centre, follow in the tradition of Olympic pictogram designs developed by art director Masaru Katzumie, who invented the first system of pictograms for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Katzumie, working with his graphic design team, was concerned with the social importance of graphic design and focused his research efforts on an internationally standardized signage system. Their unique system of icon-based signage became the model that influenced Lance Wyman for the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, and the Otl Aicher for the 1972 Munich Olympics. A noteworthy event occurred in 1966 when Aicher met with Katzumie and collaborated on underlying design standards and a more streamlined pictogram design based on the 1964 Tokyo Olympic pictograms. The Olympic wayfinding efforts since Katzumie have also become landmarks in the advancement of design systems for major international events and universal public visual design systems.
Beijing 2008 Olympic Games
The Beijing Olympics and the spirit the Chinese government hopes to create are not without controversy. Few Olympic Games, certainly none since 1936 when Jesse Owens won four track and field gold medals in front of an irate audience of Third Reich leaders, has been free of socio-political issues. In the United States at least, the atmosphere has already been heated by articles on China's human rights record, and its investments in Africa, to name a few issues. At stake for the Chinese in 2008 is nothing less than the opportunity to be perceived as a full-fledged member of the world community. To that end, China has invested heavily in the Games and its identity - from architecture to graphic design - and surrounded it all with sophisticated public relations.
The Olympics design programme has been developed in a relatively new design education and business environment, as China rapidly expands and begins to blend Western design with its 5,000-year-old artistic traditions. The designs of the Olympic emblem and its applications, athletic pictograms and Olympic colour scheme standards are elegantly presented in three large-format, white, perfect bound design standard manuals: Beijing 2008 Olympic Games Emblem Usage Manual, Pictograms of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games and Dancing Colours: Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, The Colours. The design and writing, created by ARCOG teams, is equivalent to any multinational corporate branding effort in the West. Each manual elaborately presents a facet of the standards management process. In the Emblem Usage Manual under a positioning statement entitled 'Core Design Concept of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games Emblem', the Olympic emblem is named 'Dancing Beijing' and is declared to be 'the seal of the nation', 'the signature of Beijing' and 'the spirit of the individual'. In conclusion, it is stated that 'Dancing Beijing is an invitation - a hand extended to welcome the world to China for a celebration destined to unite humanity as never before'.