Olympic fever continues with 'The Beauty of the Seal'

If Shanghaiist had a yuan for every time someone back home asked "So, you have tickets to the Olympics yet?!", we would be rolling in the coinage like Scrooge McDuck. Beijing, Shanghai, it's all the same to them. On Monday, Olympic fever hit another high as the Beijing Olympic committee unveiled the official "pictographs" that will represent each of the events to be held at the 2008 games. In addition to the official "running man" logo that has been plastered all over official and counterfeit souvenirs since the Beijing games were announced, 35 other designs were created with the same idea in mind.

This set of throwbacks to ancient Chinese script, dubbed "The Beauty of the Seal," was mainly inspired by Chinese seal script and oracle bone carvings. It is doubtful whether these designs will be used by the Beijing Olympic committee to do any tortoise shell fortune telling, but don't count out any last minute victory predictions from the Chinese dive team.

From Shanghai Daily:

Chinese graduate school student Wang Jie came up with the idea for the icons while reading rubbings from stone inscriptions. After Wang's idea was adopted, professors and students from the Chinese Central Academy of Fine Arts and Fine Arts school of Qinghua University worked together to finish the group of figures.

Now that the countdown to August 8, 2008 (quite possibly the most auspicious date of the millennium) has officially begun, Beijing has two years to get everything done safely before the world media descends upon China. This bit of cultural exchange should provide the non-Chinese world with some extra educational insight that the Five Friendlies might have missed.

Picture of the "pictograms" from the Official Beijing Olympic page.