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On The Ground: The Winter Games

ICON’s Copeland: The Man Behind The ‘Look Of The Games’

Meet Brad Copeland, the man who decides what the Olympics will look like.

That’s not quite right. After all, the stadium architects, NBC and the designers of team uniforms have a big say. But Copeland, president and founder of Atlanta branding firm ICON, is now on his 12th Olympics as the International Olympic Committee’s official advisor on the “Look of the Games.”

That means every two years, he helps a new local host committee develop every detail that communicates to the world “This is Pyeongchang.” Or Rio. Or Sochi. All told, the remit includes nearly 10,000 specific projects, from the color of the banners that spruce up the miles of chain-link fence around security perimeters, to where they erect the Olympic rings around town to what kind of logos and mascots to use. The torch relay alone has about 1,000 different deliverables.

ICON founder and President Brad Copeland in the infield of the Gangneung Oval speedskating venueCourtesy of Brad Copeland

Like many outside experts here in Korea, Copeland was pleasantly surprised with the high quality of work he found when he arrived here for the Games after years of consulting. After a difficult few years of preparations — time zones, poor communication and budget cuts were all problems — he was afraid it would be a repeat of Rio, when the world arrived and almost none of the “look” package was deployed.

“I must say that these Games in Pyeongchang really were good,” he said. “I think I went in with lower expectations but was immediately impressed by how much they had done and what they did with it.”

The point of the “Look of the Games” package is to draw a common thread between each of the sports and entertainment venues in an Olympic footprint. The real value of the Games isn’t found in any single sport; it’s in the collective mass of dozens of events under a single banner, and if there’s no visual cohesion within a host city, that gets undermined.

Just erecting the banners is harder than you think, because it’s an easy budget item to cut and it requires just-in-time delivery in the final harried weeks before the Games. At Rio 2016, the chain-link fences around the rowing venue — among the most visible parts of the Games to local residents — never did get covered, and rumor holds that staffers were literally taking banners from one venue to another to disguise shortages.

The biggest creative challenge for any host committee, Copeland said, is to “create an image that’s culturally relevant, but something that avoids the clichés that are sometimes associated with a host city or a nation.” Also, it’s got to be simple, he said, pointing to Vancouver 2010’s logo as one that looked nice in person but was too complicated for television.

Detail of the Hangul-alphabet characters snowflake look for the Pyeongchang GamesBen Fischer

Pyeongchang based its logos and affiliated marks on characters of the Hangul alphabet. The logo itself is two Korean characters, and the ubiquitous snowflakes are made up of tiny Hangul characters.

“They were able to use it in a very modern way, that not only brought something that was unique to Korea, but also used those letter forms to create snowflakes and made something that made it seem like the Winter Games,” Copeland said.

Copeland, who founded ICON 37 years ago, first got into the Olympic world when he helped Atlanta win the 1996 Summer Games. Since then, he’s worked on three other Olympic bids and has consulted with sponsors such as Coca-Cola, Visa and Volkswagen.

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