Why I Love These 4 Big Design Controversies About the Paris 2024 Olympics

The Paris 2024 Olympic Games are now underway. A spectacular opening ceremony on the Seine on Friday heralded the start of the XXXIII Olympiad. But the build-up began long before that, as Paris 2024 made headlines for its Olympic design long before the sporting action began.

First, there was the Paris 2024 logo, which still baffles people. Then there were the strangely anatomical mascots, and of course, the Olympic pictograms. Below, we round up the biggest controversies surrounding the design of the Olympic Games, and why they were actually great. Also check out our roundups of the best Olympic logos and the best Olympic posters of all time.

Five years after it was first unveiled, the Paris 2024 Olympics logo is still raising eyebrows as the Games get underway. What does Rachel from Friends have to do with sporting achievement? Did someone confuse the world’s biggest sporting event with an international hairdressing conference? We’ve compared the Paris 2024 logo to everyone from Victoria Beckham to Corrie’s Gail Platt , but it does have meaning, and it will be remembered.

What is the meaning of the Paris 2024 logo?

The logo is an optical illusion designed to resemble both the Olympic torch and a woman’s face. The face is meant to represent Marianne, the personification of the French Republic.

Sure, there’s an argument to be made that an Olympics logo should ideally be universal, and many people won’t get the relatively obscure reference. But I actually think the design is successful. Its strangeness makes it instantly recognizable. It gives the Games a softer face, and it’s a wonderfully subtle way to incorporate a national reference and promote the host city without resorting to hackneyed symbols or flashy colors. And when was the last time an Olympics logo made you laugh? That alone makes this one memorable.

Of course, that’s not how the Phyrges are supposed to look. Like the logo, the Paris 2024 Olympics mascots are also inspired by a symbol of the French Revolution, and one that’s probably a little obscure to many who aren’t French. They’re based on the shape of floppy red conical hats, or Phrygian caps, or “liberty caps.” Not exactly everyday wear in 2024, to be sure, but they do appear in the Argentine coat of arms and the seal of the U.S. Senate. And they’re worn by the Smurfs.

Unsurprisingly, the design has received a bit of backlash, with some suggesting that the mascots aren’t suitable for a family party. “We could have had a beret, a baguette, or even an Eiffel Tower. No, we went with a Phrygian cap that looks like a clitoris,” complained one person on X. But that’s a glorious thing. As the Paris organizing committee put it, the Phyrges are “fun, sporty, and they love to party” – everything you’d expect from an Olympic mascot.

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Pictograms Olympic Games Paris 2024 — The Olympic Tarot Deck(Image credit: Paris 2024)

Finally, this year the International Olympic Committee has set out to reinvent the 64 Olympic icons for each sporting event. While traditional Olympic icons were literal representations of athletes playing each sport, the new designs are more like tarot cards with their mirrored symmetry and arcane symbolism. There was a minor outcry when they were released, with some saying it was impossible to tell which sport some of them represented.

Admittedly, the icons for some of the lesser-known events are a little cryptic. The icon for goalball looks like Trivial Pursuit, and the design for climbing looks like origami in space. But the icons are also very striking, and it’s refreshing to see a move away from the typical stickman approach. Each icon features a tool from the sport it represents, such as an archery arrow, plus an image of the playing field combined in designs with an axis of symmetry to give them a coats-of-arms-like appearance.

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Team GB branding — A refreshingly different take on the colours of the Union flag(Image credit: Team GB)

It’s not just the Games themselves that have caused controversy over the design. The rebranding of Team GB by the British Olympic Association with Bath-based branding agency Thisaway was seen by some as too radical. It features a range of patterns that can be used as general graphic assets, capturing the dynamics of the various Olympic sports. The bespoke typeface, Team GB Sans by Lewis McGuffie, takes inspiration from everything from sports pitches and equipment to the movement of athletes, with its curves, curves and arcs.

Despite the complaints, the colour palette clearly references the colours of the British flag, but pushes the traditional red, white and blue as far as it can, with a range of less common alternative shades and neutrals referencing gold, silver and bronze medals. It was a winner for me. Red, white and blue aren’t unique to Britain: the same colours represent countries as diverse as France, the US and Russia. Thisaway found a way to freshen up the colour palette in a way that’s “flexible and customisable”.

Why I Love These 4 Big Design Controversies About the Paris 2024 Olympics

01. The logo of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games

What is the meaning of the Paris 2024 logo?

02. The Phyrges: the mascots of Paris 2024

01. The logo of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games

02. The Phyrges: the mascots of Paris 2024

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