Joachim Roncin is the director of design for the Paris 2024 Olympics. A famend design maven in Paris and past, Roncin has beforehand held roles as artistic director for the Ballon d’Or, France’s annual soccer award, and Cérémonie des César, France’s nationwide movie awards ceremony. The Olympics is on a distinct scale, in fact. This has been a five-year task with a sprawling, impossibly broad scope, a tough deadline, a worldwide viewers and – ideally – a optimistic legacy that can span generations of future residents. The warmth is actual.
Wallpaper* sat down with Joachim to take his temperature simply days earlier than Paris 2024 kicks off.
Joachim Roncin on designing the Olympics
Wallpaper*: How do you are feeling proper now?
Joachim Roncin: I’m in an odd limbo state. I’ve been a designer for 25 years, however nothing compares to the Olympics and Paralympics as a shopper. It’s the pinnacle. It has been 5 years since we began working with them, and abruptly the video games start in a couple of days. Our work just isn’t fairly executed, however there’s not way more that we are able to do at this stage.
W*: How do you start to explain the design course of for an entity just like the Olympics?
JR: It’s insanity, in fact. Every part collides. There’s a lot to do, so many individuals concerned, so many various challenges and alternatives. Within the morning you’re attempting to know how you can manufacture a fluffy mascot, then you definately’re speaking about medals, then the torch, then the posters. It’s very unusual to leap between so many various media; at instances I assumed my mind may explode. After which abruptly every little thing is actual all on the identical time – all these hours, all these individuals, all these discussions. And all of it occurs now.
Paris torch with its designer Matthieu Lehanneur (proper), and Paris 2024 president Tony Estanguet (left)
(Picture credit score: Paris Olympics 2024)
W*: 5 years of commissioning leads as much as a single deadline that’s then celebrated for simply sixteen days. How essential is legacy in your design function?
JR: Legacy is clearly crucial. Our design work and the video games themselves are ephemeral to some extent, however longer-term impression is what’s actually essential. Design is not only ornament for the occasion. Equally in our course of, I’ve tried to not really feel overwhelmed by considering of tolerating legacy in relation to mascot design, as an example. There’s a job to be executed, and it’s overwhelming sufficient, with out going loopy about progress in a wider sense in each single element.
W*: Did you might have shared aims throughout the whole lot of your scope, from uniforms to posters to medals and past?
JR: Early on we devised three messages which might be evident in all our work in various levels, I’m proud to say. First: sport ought to be liberated past the stadium and arenas, to be accessible to everybody. Second: we should convey the Olympics and the Paralympics collectively to be equally essential. Third: we wish to rejoice parity between women and men, which for the primary time ever at an Olympics is 50/50.
Phryges, the gender-free Paris 2024 mascot, primarily based on a Phrygian hat
(Picture credit score: Paris Olympics 2024)
W*: How are these aims expressed in a few of your initiatives?
JR: Our mascot, Phryges, is predicated on the Phrygian hat, which is a robust emblem in France on every little thing from cash to stamps. Phryges is gender-free, which feels applicable as a result of that is the society we reside in. Toys ought to be for everybody, and never gendered. That stated, we had some individuals who fearful it appeared much less like a Phrygian hat and extra like a clitoris. If it helps males to know what a clitoris appears to be like like, then I’m completely happy.
W*: That’s Olympic legacy in motion.
JR: Positive. The posters for the Olympics are one other fascinating case research for our messages. We’ve got designed two posters – one for the Olympics and one for the Paralympics – that mix to change into one. Artist Ugo Gattoni labored with us to create a picture that’s of Paris. It isn’t the emblem and the dates, or the muscled athletes from pre-Fifties that felt like propaganda. The posters present the video games and metropolis as one entity. It felt essential that it’s crafted, showcasing French savoir faire greater than soulless AI. Gattoni spent nearly 2,000 hours on the posters. Each single individual is exclusive. There isn’t a copy/paste. In previous video games, organisers promote round 10,000 posters. We’re nearly at 100,000 already.
The Olympic poster by artist Ugo Gattoni, combines the Olympics with the Paralympics for the primary time
(Picture credit score: Paris Olympics 2024)
The medals have been designed by Chaumet. Every features a nugget of iron from the Eiffel Tower on their reverse (proven above)
(Picture credit score: Paris Olympics 2024)
W*: Paris itself is sort of actually woven into the design of a number of components too. Inform me extra.
JR: We labored with Chaumet to design the medals utilizing precise iron from the Eiffel Tower. The medals have been fabricated by the Monnaie de Paris, who make our French cash. We’ve got labored with Le Coq Sportif and Decathlon on the volunteer uniforms, and with LVMH on the uniforms for the individuals who hand out the medals. The spirit of Paris is embedded in a lot of the design language and expression.
W*: The color palette is refreshingly devoid of nostalgia – it does not really feel like a youngsters’s TV programme both.
JR: The colors are all from Paris and France too; inexperienced from the roof of the Paris Opera; yellow from Matisse; crimson for the temper of affection. We selected pink because the unifying color throughout the palette as a result of I really feel that pink ought to be genderless. These are the instances we reside in. Let’s begin some revolutions. It has been great to see bicycle lanes elsewhere within the metropolis painted pink, which have had nothing to do with us.
Uniforms for the volunteers had been designed and made in collaboration with Le Coq Sportif and Decathlon
(Picture credit score: Courtesy Paris 2024)
Medal trays and uniforms for the medal stewards had been designed by LVMH
(Picture credit score: Courtesy Paris 2024)
W*: Has it been a battle to combat to your design mandate at instances?
JR: The largest problem in any design course of helps highly effective individuals perceive what design is and why it issues. I’m deeply moved by design and artwork; typically you come up in opposition to individuals who don’t communicate the identical language. I’ve been lucky right here that Tony Estanguet, the president of Paris 2024, from the very starting stated he wished to place design on the centre of our Olympics.
W*: Again to that thorny phrase ‘legacy’… What’s going to individuals really feel about Paris 2024 in 2050?
JR: I feel our biggest achievement has been how little we have now constructed that’s new. Refurbish, adapt and use what we have now had been our unique targets and we have now fulfilled these. The Olympic village will change into pupil housing. Our eyes haven’t been larger than our stomachs. This method means lots will vanish come September, but it surely additionally means we have now been one of many least costly Olympics in historical past.
The Olympic Village, master-planned by Dominique Perrault, will change into pupil housing after the video games
(Picture credit score: Paris 2024)
The skateboarding pictogram for Paris 2024
(Picture credit score: Courtesy Paris 2024)
W*: Congratulations. Will you have the ability to benefit from the occasion, or will you be mentally snagging each time you notice one thing that’s not fairly the way you imagined it?
JR: I’ll get pleasure from them! I was a skateboarder so I’m significantly excited in regards to the boarding, which takes place in Place de la Concorde, alongside the BMX, breakdancing and basketball. It’s going to change into an city park with artists and musicians alongside the sports activities, the place the general public can take in every little thing for simply €24. I additionally love every little thing within the water, and the fencing, which is such a pure, graphic sport.
W*: And dare I ask what’s subsequent?
JR: I can’t wait at hand over the baton to LA 2028! I’m impatient to see what they do. When you might have the honour of designing for the Olympics, they maintain a particular place in your coronary heart endlessly extra. That stated, from 15 September I’ll take a vacation. Maybe a retreat within the forest.
W*: The rest?
JR: I’d prefer to thank Camille Yvinec, who has led the model identification, and Juliane Philibert, who has saved the present on the street. Each have championed and supported and enabled me all through this course of, and their help and teamwork have been unbelievable. At instances I’ve been a ache – for which I’m sorry. However on the entire, what a pleasant trip we have now had collectively. Thanks.
Joachim Roncin, design director for Paris 2024
(Picture credit score: Rudy Waks)
Supply: Wallpaper
