Mexico 68
I love the iconography for Mexico City’s metro system. This 99% Invisible podcast explores the history of these icons, their evolution from Lance Wyman’s work on the graphic design campaign for the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, and how local activists co-opted the campaign to bring attention to police brutality:
Between the logo, the typeface, the colors and icons, Wyman created a visual identity that saturated the whole city. It was everywhere…The 1968 Olympics were decreed “Los juegos de la Paz” (“The Games of Peace”). So Wyman designed a little outline of a dove, which shop owners all over the city had been given to stick in their windows…Students went around the city spraying a small burst of bright red paint over those doves in all the shop windows, to make it look like the dove had been shot. They were playing with the propaganda of the Olympics and hinting at a darker political reality.
Roma also brings this period to life in stunning and tragic detail.
