Tokyo 2020's kinetic pictograms make Olympic symbols move — a Games first

At the 1964 Tokyo Games, Japan invented the Olympic sport pictogram — simple symbols that let spectators identify events without words. Tokyo 2020, hosting the Games again, set out to evolve that legacy: designer Masaaki Hiromura unveiled a complete modern set of static pictograms in 2019, then the organising committee announced 'kinetic' versions on 26 February 2020 — the first animated pictograms in Olympic and Paralympic history.

Motion designer Kota Iguchi spent more than a year on the animation. Rather than simply looping each sport's movement, the pictograms appear, perform a short sequence of the sport in motion, hold still for a moment, then disappear — 50 Olympic pictograms covering 33 sports and 23 Paralympic pictograms covering 22 sports. The committee used them at competition venues and in broadcasts to add a layer of storytelling to the Games' visual identity.

The pictograms' real breakout came at the 2021 opening ceremony, where three performers in blue-and-white brought all 50 pictograms to life one after another in a skit that recalled Japanese television's shape-changing games. The clip NHK posted drew more than 10 million YouTube views within days, and the icons sparked thousands of fan re-creations — parenting and pet parodies, anime mash-ups, and seasonal summer versions by professional illustrators.

The kinetic pictograms became one of the defining images of the Tokyo Games and a benchmark for pictogram design, proving that a system designed in 1964 could be reborn as a motion-native format for a social-media era.