Lance Wyman’s Visual Storytelling
“I think that graphic design is all about telling stories, but visual stories.” This is just such an excellent thought from designer Lance Wyman shared. Telling stories but making them visual stories.
And justifiably one might ask just who is Lance Wyman and what was his story? He is the iconic designer of the 1968 Olympic games, arguably the most effective graphic design and way-showing system’s ever designed. His opportunity and his work became a pinnacle of branding in this very first Olympics hosted by a Latin American nation and graphic design became its cultural ambassador.
His work and that of his team has inspired every Olympics thereafter until even today.
Wyman’s own personal influences were Robert Brownjohn, Saul Steinberg, and Rene Magritte. And soon to be released, Unit Editions Publishing has created a fabulous book Lance Wyman: The Monograph on his life’s work (http://uniteditions.com [pre-order]).
Lance’s work was inspired by Opt Art.
Various elements of those individuals became early influences that Wyman drew into his own aesthetic experiences. These masterful influences can be detected in his own matured graphic design work, along with more consciously assimilated motifs and visual metaphors he derived from his personal interest in The Bauhaus, Op Art, and the contemporary design world, which first emerged for him while he was a young neophyte student at Pratt Institute in the late 1950’s. His use of form and color dominated his visual vocabulary.
The intuitive design of the Mexico games broke many of the corporate rules for usage. Lance’s geometric design using the number of the year 68 was incorporated into the mark itself presenting a new and fresh approach.
Graphic design is the way we communicate with words and images and it is about storytelling — and more specifically visual stories. A foremost task in design is to make accessibility just that… and, things enjoyable as well. Lance’s design did just this. So how might you as a designer use a visual medium to instill values in society? Perhaps by not using a design-for-design sake approach but rather tapping into your own personal value system.
If your approach to design might happen this way, you’ll not limit yourself to simply reacting to current culture; rather, one might push the paradigm and make the value of design a moral transaction by your own work.
The best design is about creating culture not simply reflecting it. The Mexico Olympics opened that door wide as students turned out in protest, demanding dialogue with the government, opening a debate that might end corruptions and longstanding violent repressions.
What we seek in the design we create, not that we always achieve it is a harmonious relationship, where value becomes a balance between form, truth and beauty. Lance’s peace symbol and icons for the Mexico Olympics did just that. And for the Mexico Olympics ‘Peace was a complicated dichotomy represented first from the ideals of Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern games.
The original peace logo came to represent global world peace. Many of Lance’s designs during this time were appropriated by students as protest strategies.
Lance Wyman, the iconic designer of the amazing Mexico 68 Olympics created a system which achieved this and much more. He would imagine,“Does it work? Does it communicate? I think these questions override everything else.”
And as he suggested,“I design for a mass audience. I enjoy designing for the general public, it’s a challenge… “and it feels like an accomplishment.” Olympic work is often hard to decode as it’s duality bridges a modernity of its own time. It’s story values respect a concept of peace as well the culture of its host nation.
Perhaps for Lance a legacy is as Henry Thoreau imagined: “To affect the quality of the day is the highest of arts.” That is our mission. Lance Wyman’s work exemplified this and much more.
PS: If you’d like to know more about this subject, Unit Editions is publishing a fabulous book Lance Wyman: The Monograph to be released on his life work (http://uniteditions.com [now on pre-order]). And Walker Art Center has a terrific back story of the time on their blog, Radiant Discord. (http://blogs.walkerart.org).
