project
competition wear
customer
adidas
year
2016
task
apparel design
Visiting the Olympic Games has been one of my greatest childhood dreams.
I still remember clearly being a little girl in front of the TV screen, visually diving into this endless world of sports. Seeing a weightlifter for the very first time, following the thrill of a fencing final or being able to cheer to my heroines in gymnastics from the other side of the globe. Those experiences will be forever burned into my personal hardcopy. For quite a few reasons, including a severe sports accident of mine, I never made it to the games as an active competitor, but I still was longing to be part of this event for many years.
Chance came, when joining the adidas olympic product design team to work on London 2012 and got even more real when we were creating the visual language for the competition wear for Rio 2016. Thinking about the needs of all these very different athletes, some of them batteling in rather niche disciplines, had been a major highlight of my career and a true matter of the heart.
As an icing on the cake, we were able to travel to Rio to experience all our work in the wild!
We’ve seen Usain Bolt competing, the Brazilian Beach Volleyball Team winning and I felt some kind of circle was closing.
But besides all the excitement, personally, I have to admit it was also some kind of an „unveiling of a myth“. On TV, you usually only see the golden moments, that make it easy to disregard the costs under which they are created. I can and will only speak for myself, but I felt that some of the facilities and events appeared quite alien to the place they were thrown into. Not only from an environmental standpoint, but also from a cultural and financial aspect. Let´s all work on it!
