The archive · Product Ideas · Marketing decision · 2025–2026
Cheer Signs turns applause into a visual language deaf athletes can see
For the Deaflympics' centenary, Tokyo and TBWA\Hakuhodo turned applause into three visual cheers, so a stadium can support deaf athletes without sound.
Tokyo Metropolitan Government · TBWA\Hakuhodo
What it had to solve
Cheering at sports events is built on sound — voices, chants, applause — yet for deaf athletes that support is invisible. Tokyo, host of the Deaflympics' 100th anniversary, wanted to change how crowds encourage them. Working with TBWA\Hakuhodo, 5005 Inc. and the NHK group, the city launched 'Cheer Signs' in November 2025, a visual cheering system designed with and for deaf athletes and deaf creators.
How it works
Cheering at sports events is built on sound — voices, chants, applause — yet for deaf athletes that support is invisible. Tokyo, host of the Deaflympics' 100th anniversary, wanted to change how crowds encourage them. Working with TBWA\Hakuhodo, 5005 Inc. and the NHK group, the city launched 'Cheer Signs' in November 2025, a visual cheering system designed with and for deaf athletes and deaf creators.
Cheer Signs replaces sound with choreography. It introduces three signature gestures — 'Go!', 'You Can Do It!' and 'Grab the medal!' — each inspired by sign-language expressions of applause, and spectators perform them in unison so athletes can see and feel the encouragement. Because the gestures were co-created with deaf athletes and creators, they carry real meaning rather than a hearing designer's guess, and they became a shared visual rhythm across venues and broadcasts during the centenary Games.
The system turned cheering into something deaf and hearing spectators could do together, and the work traveled far beyond the stadium. It won the Grand Prix in Entertainment for Sports Stars at MAD STARS 2026, took three Silver Lotuses and a Bronze at ADFEST 2026, and won two Golds at Spikes Asia 2026 across Design and Innovation, with further honors from the One Show, D&AD, Clio Health, ADC and New York Festivals.
Why it lands
- It attacked the real barrier: cheering is usually sound, so replacing applause with visible movement lets deaf athletes receive the same encouragement as hearing ones.
- Co-creation with deaf athletes and creators kept the gestures authentic — rooted in Japanese Sign Language rather than invented by a hearing agency.
- Three simple, repeatable movements meant whole stadiums could join in, turning inclusion from a policy into a shared ritual.
- A single Games became a transferable model: the visual cheering language carried into broadcasts and won Grand Prix recognition from Asia's biggest juries.
What it did
The system turned cheering into something deaf and hearing spectators could do together, and the work traveled far beyond the stadium. It won the Grand Prix in Entertainment for Sports Stars at MAD STARS 2026, took three Silver Lotuses and a Bronze at ADFEST 2026, and won two Golds at Spikes Asia 2026 across Design and Innovation, with further honors from the One Show, D&AD, Clio Health, ADC and New York Festivals.
What you can take
Co-create with the people the design is for: gestures made with deaf athletes carried true meaning, and one city's cheering system became an award-winning model for inclusive spectatorship.
Since then
After the centenary Games, Cheer Signs kept earning recognition through 2026: the MAD STARS Grand Prix for Entertainment in Sports, two Golds at Spikes Asia, three Silver Lotuses at ADFEST, a Clio Health Silver, a D&AD Wood Pencil and One Show and ADC honors. Its creators framed the system as a legacy of coexistence between deaf and hearing communities — a visual cheering language that outlives any single tournament and a template other hosts could adopt.
Sources
- CHEER SIGNS — TBWA\Hakuhodo work page
- TBWA\HAKUHODO Redefines Applause for the Tokyo 2025 Deaflympics with 'Cheer Signs'
- TBWA\HAKUHODO Takes Grand Prix of the Year Among Nine MAD STARS Wins
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