Mexico 68 Identity vs Pictogram System
メキシコ68 / 案内用ピクトグラム
Mexico 68 Identity comes from Public Design and Pictogram System from Information Design. Both are read here as style. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Mexico 68 Identity
The Olympic identity Wyman built for Mexico City: concentric lines radiating from the logotype into venues, uniforms and stamps, fusing Op art with folk art and wrapping a whole city in pulsing imagery.
Pictogram System
Unified symbol systems that name facilities and actions without language. Tokyo 1964 systematized sport and wayfinding symbols; the AIGA/DOT transportation set became the public-domain world standard.
| Mexico 68 Identity | Pictogram System | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1966–1968 | 1964– |
| Family | Public Design | Information Design |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | Radiating concentric lines / Op-art vibration / Fusion with folk art / City-scale deployment | Geometrized human figures / Uniform stroke weight / Consistency as a system / Independence from language |
| Best used for | Identity for a games or arts festival carried from venues down to tickets · Connecting local folk pattern to a contemporary system rather than quoting it | Guiding visitors of many languages through a venue without words · Turning facility or sport categories into marks legible from a distance |
| Type | Concentric lines from the mark reused as the skeleton of a custom alphabet | Draw every mark on one grid and stroke weight, human proportions shared |
| Composition | Waves of line carried surface to surface, crossing the boundaries between elements | Fit all symbols to a square frame with matched margins and optical center |
| Material | A few high-chroma colors including fluorescents, repeated at large outdoor scale | Single color silhouettes, minimum size and viewing distance decided first |
| Caution | Pasting concentric lines on as decoration produces no vibration and leaves a scatter of unrelated patterns across the pieces. | Drawing each mark as a picture lets stroke and proportion drift, the set stops reading as a system, and meanings swap at a distance. |