Rational modernism · 1966–1970 · Latin America & Caribbean
Mexico 68 Olympic & Metro Identity
Also known as México 68, Mexico 68 graphic programme, Mexico City Metro pictograms
The graphic programme of the 1968 Mexico City Olympics and the city's first Metro line. One optical device, parallel lines echoing outward from the '68' and the Olympic rings, was extended into an alphabet and spread over posters, stamps, uniforms, pavements and street lights. Lance Wyman and Eduardo Terrazas built it with Huichol artists, joining Op Art to Indigenous line-work, and added colour-coded venues and pictograms that need no Spanish to read.
Use it with care
The line device was developed with Huichol (Wixárika) artists, whose yarn and bead tablas (nierika) carry religious meaning tied to the peyote pilgrimage, the deer and maize. Borrow the line method, not Wixárika iconography; for anything using their motifs, commission and credit Wixárika artists. The identity is also bound up with the Tlatelolco massacre of 2 October 1968, ten days before the Games, after which students turned the Olympic graphics against the state, so reuse it knowingly.
01
How it works
- Generate the whole identity from one device: concentric parallel lines that echo outward from the letterforms.
- Extend the device into a complete display alphabet and apply it at every scale, from stamps and tickets to pavements and balloons.
- Code venues, routes and Metro lines by saturated colour (Mexican pink, orange, turquoise, yellow) so colour does the wayfinding.
- Give every sport, cultural event and station its own pictogram, drawn from the action or from the place's history, so people can navigate without reading.
- Root a modern, systematic programme in local Indigenous and pre-Hispanic sources rather than in neutral corporate form.
Mexico City: design office of the Organising Committee of the XIX Olympiad (chaired by Pedro Ramírez Vázquez) and the Sistema de Transporte Colectivo Metro
02
Its design choices
From Stylogeny’s vocabulary of design choices: defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.
- Layout & composition
- Space & hierarchy
- Typography
- Colour
- Surface & texture
- Medium & production
- Tone & intent
- Avoids
- Naturalistic depiction, Painterly illustration, Painterly brushwork, Script, Collage & layering, Floral & vegetal, Skeuomorphic material
Palette
#e4007c#f39200#00a19a#ffd200#111111#ffffff
Typefaces
Mexico 68 multiline display alphabet
Lance Wyman & Eduardo Terrazas
Tipo Metro
Lance Wyman, 1969
Known for
Lance Wyman
Mexico 68 logotype and graphic programme; Mexico City Metro wayfinding and Tipo Metro, 1969
Eduardo Terrazas
extension of the logotype into a multiline alphabet; integral design
Pedro Ramírez Vázquez
architect, chair of the Organising Committee
Huichol artists including Pedro de Haro, whose yarn-and-resin tablas gave the first logotype drafts
Mexico City Metro station pictograms, e.g. the butterfly for Juanacatlán, 'place of butterflies'
1969
Poster, Mexico Olympics 1968
Cooper Hewitt, 1987-24-20
03
Where it comes from, and what it’s close to
Before it
The style it grew out of, and the styles it borrowed from.
After it
The styles that grew out of it.
No later style in the atlas grew out of it yet.
Alike in its design choices
Styles that make many of the same choices, related or not, besides those above.
04
Real works
Artefacts in museums, libraries and archives that show the style, linked at their source.
- Juegos de la XIX Olimpiada Octubre 12-27, Mexico '68Department of Publications and Urban Design, Organizing Committee of the XIX Olympiad; Lance Wyman · 1968 · The Museum of Modern Art, New York (356.2014.44)
- Mexico 68Eduardo Terrazas and Lance Wyman · 1967 · The Museum of Modern Art, New York (179.1968)
- Mexico City 1968 Olympics general eventsLance Wyman (Organizing Committee of the XIX Olympiad) · c. 1968 · The Museum of Modern Art, New York (404.2014.14)
- Olympic banners on the Auditorio Nacional, gymnastics venue of the 1968 GamesOrganising Committee of the XIX Olympiad (banners); photograph donated to Fortepan by Éva Romák · 1968 · Fortepan photo archive, Budapest (ID 73817)
05
Sources
- https://eyemagazine.com/feature/article/this-is-1968-this-is-mexico
- https://www.cooperhewitt.org/2016/08/16/1968-logo-gold/
- https://peoplesgdarchive.org/item/18240/mexico-city-metro-wayfinding-system
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lance_Wyman
- Eye magazine, 'This is 1968 … this is Mexico' (interviews; Pedro de Haro, Huichol community leader, and the tablas): https://eyemagazine.com/feature/article/this-is-1968-this-is-mexico
How Stylogeny researches and checks a style: where the facts come from.