The archive · Design & Visual · Product decision · 2023
Rally Japan 2023 turns the rising sun into a driving sun for its WRC key art
For the WRC round on home soil, the key motif made Japan's rising sun drive: illustration patterns synchronized with rally photography.
Rally Japan 2023 Commission
What it had to solve
Rally Japan 2023 needed a key visual motif for the WRC round on home soil. Japan is historically the land of the rising sun and its national flag carries that image, so the tournament had a ready-made cultural backdrop for its identity.
How it works
Rally Japan 2023, the WRC round staged in Japan, needed a key motif that could stand for the whole event. Japan is historically called the land of the rising sun and its national flag is built on that image, giving the identity a cultural fact to work from.
The idea set the event's key motif as a 'driving sun': the rising sun transformed so that it burns while driving forward, expressing the spirit of the best rally drivers from around the world aiming for the top in Japan. Different patterns of the motif were created, and each illustration's composition is synchronized with photography of rally cars in motion.
The result is an identity where national metaphor and motorsport motion share one frame: the sun does not decorate the event, it races with it. D&AD preserved the work in its awards archive as an Illustration winner, and the page records no audience or sales figures.
Why it lands
- The rising sun is a national image every audience recognizes, so the motif starts with instant meaning.
- Giving the sun forward motion turns a static emblem into the event's own energy instead of decoration.
- Synchronizing each illustration with real rally photography makes the artwork and the sport read as one image.
- A family of patterns keeps one motif flexible across the tournament's formats and surfaces.
What it did
The motif gave the event one legible image: a national symbol that moves at the speed of the sport, carried across multiple illustration patterns tied to real race photography. D&AD preserved the work in its awards archive as an Illustration winner; the page records no engagement figures.
What you can take
When a host nation offers a symbol everyone already knows, give the symbol the sport's motion: synchronize its composition with real action so culture and competition read as one image.
Since then
Driving Sun now stands in D&AD's awards archive as the visual identity built for the Japanese WRC round; the page records no figures. The transferable move is taking a host nation's existing symbol and animating it with the sport's motion, so culture and competition share a single image.
Sources
spotted an error? The archive wants to know.
Your turn
You just read one. Describe the brief you are staring at, and see who has been given the same problem.
Free account · 3 free questions · no card