smithsonianmag: The History of the Olympic Pictograms: How Designers Hurdled the Language Barrier Of all the instances in which graphic communication is necessary to transcend language barriers, the Olympic Games are, if not the most important, probably the most visible. We take the little icons of swimmers and sprinters as a given aspect of Olympic design, but the pictograms were a mid-20th Century invention—first employed, in fact, the last time London hosted the games, in 1948 (some pictographic gestures were made at the 1936 Berlin games, though their mark on international memory has been permitted to fade because of their association with Third Reich ideology). - Continue reading at Smithsonian.com. Image: Virtual Olympic Games Museum Ed note: The little-known history of how the modern Olympics got their start.

smithsonianmag:

The History of the Olympic Pictograms: How Designers Hurdled the Language Barrier

Of all the instances in which graphic communication is necessary to transcend language barriers, the Olympic Games are, if not the most important, probably the most visible. We take the little icons of swimmers and sprinters as a given aspect of Olympic design, but the pictograms were a mid-20th Century invention—first employed, in fact, the last time London hosted the games, in 1948 (some pictographic gestures were made at the 1936 Berlin games, though their mark on international memory has been permitted to fade because of their association with Third Reich ideology). - Continue reading at Smithsonian.com.

Image: Virtual Olympic Games Museum

Ed note: The little-known history of how the modern Olympics got their start.

(via smithsonianmag)