The Paralympics’ visual identity: when aesthetics meet reality

It may sound silly (and maybe it is), but only up to a point. It’s a chromatic issue: how colors and lettering print onto certain materials and how those materials, in turn, adhere to the body. This isn’t just about the Olympics. It isn’t just about the Winter Olympic Games. But since last February 6, when we found ourselves constantly confronted with the pure white backdrop of downhill courses, frozen arenas, and rinkside zones, we’ve understood more clearly how being immersed for three weeks in lines of every possible color has made us almost captive to a world halfway between Disney Pixar and the Teletubbies—also thanks to a humanity at least half concealed by helmets and oversized goggles.

When those were pulled off at the end of a race (or after a defeat), it felt like seeing a human face for the first time. A strange sense of wonder, specific to these Games. And so, tired of gravity, we found ourselves ready to glide instead of walk, to pirouette instead of simply turn sideways, to lose ourselves in midair rather than inside a shopping mall.

In this sense, the men’s ice hockey final between the United States and Canada was a triumph of red on white everywhere (given the two nations’ shared colors): in the stands, on the uniforms, but above all imprinted on the retina when viewed from above—the privileged vantage point—of the immaculate rink at the Arena Milano (soon to become “Unipol Dome”), brand-new and completed in photo-finish timing to host the tournament and more.

In the concourses—equipped with food and hot and cold drinks accessible simply by tapping a Visa card—you could see a joyful, entirely non-aggressive crowd covered in maple leaves or Captain America sweatpants, fake-fur Davy Crockett hats or Texan cowboy hats. Moderated cheering, also thanks to the overwhelming and brilliantly trashy musical selection at 130 bpm that laid down the sonic flooring for every second of the match, its buildup, and its intervals.

It ended in overtime, 2–1 to the United States, with contained celebrations and no trace of Trumpian grandeur. The geopolitical “heated rivalry” gave way to a kind of adolescent half-sleep that was ultimately the hallmark of the game—and of many matches seen in recent days.

Now I’ll probably attract spit and kicks, but seen from above, inside this inverted cone, hockey dynamics resemble—more than soccer—the scuffles of kids roughhousing on a frozen lake after school (American football being the outdoor version). Add the armor-like uniforms—goalies’ kits were magnificent—and the rinkside player entrances that at times recall choreographic leaps from West Side Story, and the teenage character sits right at the heart of the game, as in many of the sixteen sports we’ve watched these days. And here one cannot fail to mention the bronze in snowboard cross by the fantastic eighteen-year-old Michela Moioli.

More than soccer or other sports, this comic-book winter world is full of ultra-technological cosplayers racing along tracks embedded in the Forum di Assago (Milano Ice Skating Arena) or in the repurposed pavilions of Fiera Milano in Rho (now Milano Speed Skating Stadium, later destined to become a “Live Dome”). There—aside from the alpine events between Cortina and Livigno—we witnessed incredible things: the men’s three-person relays, one drafting the other; the individual speed races that create swarms of colored filaments in the eye. Added to these are the graphic elements along the rink boards and TV transitions, composing a very beautiful visual identity for the Games, especially in the sky-blue–yellow–green gradients by Landor & Fitch.

Equally interesting is the work by Studio Tomo Tomo with Edizioni Zero, which wrapped the Portello station (near CityLife) with “Fundamentals”, the intervention dedicated to the principles of each sport, including quotations from Boccioni. This remixed, lightweight futurism—together with the generalized body wrapping (countless were the boys’ shorts as they tried to squeeze into racing suits, with social media awash in firm backsides everywhere, especially male)—has vaporized the heaviness of the world, ushering us into one of reality’s possible universes: the one we’d like to inhabit all the time, and not just for such a short while.

Everywhere, on the streets and in the rabbit-warren of the Olympic Village, thousands of young people in windbreakers of every color and geometry, all the way to the inflatable white jackets designed for the U.S. team by Nike ACG. The Unipol Arena—which seems as though it has always existed—is in fact the result of a lightning-fast engineering miracle. Coming off the ring road, it’s impossible not to notice the three LED-wall rings of this sort of Guggenheim (imagined by David Chipperfield), with bands rotating through the green-blue-yellow gradient.

Sixteen thousand indoor seats, a structure similar to Cologne’s arena but taken to the next level (unsurprisingly, it is owned by the German giant Eventim). A new venue, well positioned in what used to be a black hole of the city’s southern expansion, also equipped with one of the chicest parking facilities in the world. Perfect sightlines from every seat, a massive ring of luxury skyboxes, minimum comfort guaranteed.

By mid-March, once the Games are over, it will open to global music acts, NBA stops, and summer parties in the 12,000-square-meter forecourt. An aesthetic attuned to a generation raised on K-Pop, with a precise idea of “effortless” luxury. A spaceship ready to add new performances, new worlds.

Unless one belongs to a reality so raw that becoming a superhero is no longer optional—but necessary, in order to finally fly. The appointment is set for March 5–15 with the Paralympics: perhaps the real future, here and now. That’s where the real game will be played, graphics or not.

Opening image: Photo Alessandro Scarano