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Cover news reporter Shao Meng
With the Winter Olympics approaching, Beijing is about to become the only city to host both the Winter Olympics and the Summer Olympics. "The 'City of The Two Olympics' is a very important concept that we reflect in all aspects of our design." "Whether it is the torch, medal, emblem inspiration source, color system, venue utilization, etc., the entire Winter Olympic Games preparation process will reflect the characteristics of the 'City of Two Olympics'."
Lin Cunzhen was interviewed by cover news.
A few days ago, on a busy winter afternoon, Lin Cunzhen, the designer of the emblem of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games and the emblem of the Winter Paralympic Games, was exclusively interviewed by the cover news in the office area of the Exhibition Center of the Beijing Winter Olympic Organizing Committee. White sweatshirt, black coat, twist braids hanging low behind the head, always with a smile on his face when he does not speak. As the image landscape art director of the Cultural Activities Department of the Beijing Winter Olympics Organizing Committee, she told reporters about the design aesthetics of the Beijing Winter Olympics and her story with the Winter Olympics.
Speaking of Lin Cunzhen, many people remember the scene when the emblems of the Beijing Winter Olympics and the Winter Paralympic Games were released on December 15, 2017 in the "Water Cube". The flexible and flowing shape, the concept of blending Chinese calligraphy and sports elements, makes the "Winter Dream" and "Leap" amaze the audience.
In fact, in addition to the designer of these two important emblems, Lin Cunzhen has many "identities": she is the founder of the well-known magazine "Art and Design" in the industry, the deputy dean of the School of Design of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and a collector and ski enthusiast. For Lin Cunzhen, there is also a "label" that makes her proud, that is, "there is an indissoluble relationship with the Olympic Games."
"I started designing the Olympics in 2003 and will be 20 years old in 2023, and most of my professional experience is related to the Olympic Games." Lin Cunzhen said with a smile that in 2003, she began to participate in the design of the Beijing Olympic Games, and since then, the Logo of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games, the emblem of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games and the Emblem of the Winter Paralympic Games are all from her hands, and she is currently the image landscape art director of the Cultural Activities Department of the Beijing Winter Olympic Organizing Committee, responsible for the brand, image and event landscape of the Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games.
The emblem of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games "Winter Dream" and the emblem of the Winter Paralympic Games "Leap".
Talking about the emblem of the Winter Olympic Games and the emblem of the Winter Paralympic Games:
Nearly 10,000 revisions in eight months
Cover News: Regarding the emblem of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, can you tell us about your creative experience? How many times have you probably changed it?
Lin Cunzhen: On July 31, 2016, the emblems of the Beijing Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games were open to the world, and we submitted the manuscript the day before the collection deadline, and at the end of January 2017, we received a notice of selection. From the time of receiving the notice to prepare the revision and finalizing it in November 2017, there were about 10 months in between. The revision work is carried out with stages, because the emblem is not a simple project design, involving a lot of factors, including social review, waiting for feedback, as well as legal review of intellectual property rights, the real revision process may take 8 months.
There are six people in the revision team, including two students and four teachers, I and two students are working every day, the remaining three teachers will regularly come to help us read the manuscript, but also undertake some psychological counseling work, because this is a confidential project, in strict accordance with the national confidentiality regulations to manage, our computers are specially handled, all the transmission can not use the network, can not use the U disk, the two computers even if next to each other, but also have to carve the disk, pass each other documents, etc., can not say to the outside world that they are doing this work, This kind of work state is particularly high-pressure, so when our teachers come to see the manuscript, they often give us encouragement and encouragement.
Lin Cunzhen at work. Courtesy of respondents
We will build a new folder every day, and a new folder for each major change, there are more than 300 folders in total, nearly 15 G of file volume, we roughly counted, the three of us worked non-stop for eight months, maybe nearly ten thousand modifications, but it is difficult to say the numbers exactly.
Cover News: What was the design inspiration for the emblem of the Beijing Winter Olympics? The two elements of calligraphy and movement seem to have little to do with each other on the surface, so how did you combine them?
Lin Cunzhen: We successfully bid for the Winter Olympics in 2015, and at the end of 2013, the winter Olympic bid logo began to be collected, and I participated, and I used a "winter" word at that time.
Chinese characters are Chinese with Chinese genes, and from oracle bones or earlier to carved symbols, it has pictographic features. And calligraphy is one of the highest artistic realms in China, which is not available in other countries and other scripts, which is also a factor that we consider, so we take calligraphy and writing as the core element of our creativity.
How are calligraphy, writing and the Winter Olympics linked to sports? That's what we first thought about. Because of the Winter Olympics, winter is a very representative feature, and the huge difference between it and the Summer Olympics is in the seasons, so we choose the word "winter" to reflect the characteristics of ice and snow.
The posture of athletes on the sports field is very easy for us to see the characteristics of movement and graphics, Chinese is hieroglyphs, in fact, we can find commonalities, so we will combine the symbols of the abstract summary of the movement and the abstract generalization of the text, and at the same time let the graphics meet the basic reading of the word "winter", and abstract the movement form of ice and snow sports.
Cover news: How are the names "Winter Dream" and "Leap" determined? What does it mean?
Lin Cunzhen: The name "Winter Dream" was discussed with Jiang Xiaoyu, vice chairman of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee, who was a judge of the emblem of the Winter Olympic Games at that time and an important expert in the collection of emblems. He said that in fact, the Winter Olympics is a dream that we Chinese, and by 2022, the dream has come true, which should be related to the dream, and it is related to winter, so at that time he proposed to name it "Winter Dream", which I think is particularly meaningful, and I determined the "Winter Dream".
In fact, the most original text source of the Winter Paralympic emblem is a "fly" word, which reflects that every disabled person has a dream of wanting to fly, and the sport of the Winter Paralympic athletes is very intense, there is a strong competitiveness and fighting spirit, we feel that the word "leap" is used to reflect the characteristics of the Winter Paralympic athletes' sports, but also reflects this concept of struggle and dream, so the name of the Winter Paralympic emblem is called "Leap".
Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games sports icons.
Talk about the Winter Olympic sports icons:
I want to attract more young people to pay attention to traditional art forms
Cover News: You are the head of the Winter Olympic sports icon design team, how was the final plan for the Winter Olympic sports icon determined? Is the "literal" factor also taken into account?
Lin Cunzhen: At the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, there was a particularly successful set of sports icons that were "The Beauty of the Seal Book", which was also made of text at that time. We want to reflect the inheritance of culture, make a complete set of concepts of sports icons for the Winter and Summer Olympic Games, and pass on the previous sports icon ideas to the Winter Olympics as a cultural heritage, and we feel that using words is a good concept.
The 2008 Olympic sports icon is a golden seal book, it has a very beautiful curved structure, but there is a little conflict between that form and ice and snow sports, because the ice and snow movement is very fast, very powerful, so we will go back to the symbol characteristics of earlier words, find the oracle bone and ancient carved symbols, and then we go to analyze the oracle bone and carved symbols, the structure of its line angles, its proportional relationship, the structural characteristics of the text after finding, with the state of motion and the structural characteristics of the text together, A new abstract figure is formed. This is the idea of the creation of sports icons for the Winter Olympics.
There is a very important stage of work, that is, to cooperate with sports experts, one by one to cut the shape, to accurately express the sport, the sport must be specially understood, the selected sports form must be a typical representative form of sports, and it must be very beautiful, so we and the State General Administration of Sports, sports experts, Olympic champions will be very closely cooperative, let them see whether the graphics are accurate, is not able to express the best sports state. When we can't draw it, the champions will pose for us on the spot, and we will see what the difference between the live pose and the icon is, and then adjust.
Cover News: The seal icon of this Winter Olympics has "moved", what is the consideration for designing the icon to be dynamic? What are the difficulties in dynamic icon design?
Lin Cunzhen: In fact, the dynamic is not from the idea of sports icons, we did the core graphics before when we did the dynamic, that is also the first dynamic graphics in the history of the Olympic Games.
Dynamic is actually the requirement of our modern and contemporary reading habits, and we must also deal with the change of everyone's reading habits, from the original static to the current dynamic. After making the static form of the sports icon, we immediately entered the design process of the motion graphics, and invited the team of the Central Academy of Fine Arts to complete the dynamic relationship together. We made two forms, one is to engrave some characteristics of the seal, for example, when the figure appears, it is actually the same as the state of the engraved knife. It is also particularly important to put the more popular rhythms and more fashionable music elements in it, and when the sports icon is individually dynamic, you will find that it is with the rhythm of the music.
Our original intention is that everyone mentions that seal engraving is a very old thing, and many young people will think that this is a very old thing in the museum when they see seal engraving, so we want to use a more fashionable way to attract more young people to pay attention to our excellent art form.
The emblem of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics has been repeatedly revised. Courtesy of respondents
Talking about the image landscape design of the Winter Olympics:
The concept of the "City of The Two Olympics" is reflected in all aspects of the preparation process
Cover News: You participated in the design of the 2008 Olympic Games, what is the inheritance and difference between the Winter Olympics and the Olympic Games in terms of creative concepts and other aspects? Is the concept of a "city of two Olympics" reflected in the design of this Winter Olympic Games?
Lin Cunzhen: "The City of the Two Olympics" is a concept that we are very concerned about, because this is a unique feature of Beijing – the only city in the world that has hosted both the Winter Olympics and the Summer Olympics.
The Winter Olympic torch has the concept of "double Olympic city", on the torch we can see the gradient pattern from the auspicious cloud to the snowflake, the auspicious cloud is the graphic form of the 2008 Olympic torch, the snowflake is a characteristic of the Winter Olympic Games; the Winter Olympic medal uses the concept of Yubi, which is also consistent with the golden jade concept of the 2008 Olympic medals; the Winter Olympic sports icon is inspired by Chinese characters, and it is also a form of the 2008 Olympic games emblem, and the 2008 Olympic games emblem is a "Beijing" character. The emblem of the 2022 Winter Olympics is a "winter" word; there is a color in our color system called Great Wall Gray, which is the color that was extracted from the color system in 2008 and inherited. In addition, many of the venues of this Winter Olympic Games are the venues of the 2008 Olympic Games, and we will apply them again. Therefore, in the whole process of preparing for the Winter Olympic Games, the "City of The Two Olympic Games" is a very important concept, which will be reflected in all aspects of the design.
Regarding the difference in the image landscape of the 2008 Olympic Games and the 2022 Winter Olympics, our first experience in 2008 may not be particularly sufficient, when we did one by one, and did not form a complete system. But this time, from the design of the emblem, I was thinking about how to systematize the image landscape and what kind of cultural concept to use through this system. In this system, each core element may be different tasks, such as "ice pier" embodies science and technology, reflects the future dream; "Edelweiss" may express more culture, express the concept of people; sports icon is the inheritance of words, it will have the combination of ancient culture and fashion, etc., each element has its position and role in this system, and finally when the overall relationship is formed, you will find that the most core concept of Chinese culture runs through all, which forms a complete system.
Cover News: The Winter Olympics have announced the torch, emblem, uniform, mascot, etc., what are the overall design considerations for these elements? How is the image landscape test going so far?
Lin Cunzhen: After we finished the medal release, the important core elements have been released, which means that our work on the core elements and the winter Olympic landscape creation part has been completed. What we're doing now is the application part, how do these elements apply to the venue? How can these landscapes have the characteristics of better protecting athletes? After the Winter Olympics, when you look back at these video records, you can see at a glance that this is the Beijing Winter Olympics, not other games, which is also an important role in the identification of the image landscape.
We are now doing our best to do the venue landscape, and the TV broadcast company to cooperate, because of the impact of the epidemic, there are many viewers will watch the Winter Olympics in front of the TV, we have shifted a lot of focus to how to shoot better, how to see more beautifully from the lens, more able to reflect the brand characteristics of the 2022 Winter Olympics and the International Olympic Committee, most of the work is currently around this aspect.