A graphic look at the Olympics

The New York Times has a great video that goes back over the history of Olympic pictograms — those little stick-athletes doing all kinds of sports — and critiquing the good ones and the bad ones.

I tried to embed it, but you have to go to their site. Watch it here.

I don’t completely agree with everything — some of designer Stephen Heller’s judgments seem awfully arbitrary — but mostly, I can see what he’s saying. Some designers just tried too hard. Some just didn’t try at all.

It seems very difficult to strike a nice balance between ‘iconic and timeless’ and ‘new and different.’