In Spring of 2024, the cities of Paris, France and Los Angeles announced a poster competition for the Paris 2024 and Los Angeles 2028 Olympic and Paralympic games. The invitation to compete was given to three Los Angeles-area schools (ArtCenter College of Design, CalArts, and Otis College of Art and Design) and one Paris-based school (EPSAA: École Professionnelle Supérieure d’Arts graphiques de la Ville de Paris). Students were tasked to create a poster and social media animation that celebrated the Olympic and Paralympic games being held in Paris 2024 and the transition to Los Angeles 2028.

This was a difficult challenge as the cities of Paris and Los Angeles initially don’t seem to have much in common. However, as someone who lives near Hollywood and a former visitor to Paris, I realized that both cities are large tourist destinations. I decided to represent Paris by its most famous cultural and tourist landmark, the Eiffel Tower. Los Angeles was represented with an Academy Award, serving as a stand-in for LA’s entertainment industry as well as a nod to Oscar trinkets that tourists can buy on Hollywood Boulevard. The link that would join these two cities would be one of the most well known symbols of the Olympics, the torch.

Initial sketches (included in the optional image section) were originally going to be more humorous and focus on the cheap and tacky nature of tourism in the cities. When this wasn’t working, I shifted to a more serious approach and decided to reference the artistic link between the cities as well. This led to Conté crayon drawings of the icons, which then led to paper cutouts. The rough use of paper seemed to represent the artistic nature of both cities while giving a mid-century feeling to the poster as well. After adjusting the composition to show the transition between cities, the final poster was completed. This same rough paper nature was carried into the animation. The flames of the torch for the animation were cut out of individual pieces of paper, as can be seen in the main image section.

Only twenty-four posters were chosen between all of the schools and I’m happy say that my work was one of the entries chosen by the cites of Paris and Los Angeles. My work and other winning posters were displayed along the Canal Saint-Martin in Paris and on the City of Paris’s website and social media for the 2024 games. The posters will then be displayed again in 2028 for the Los Angeles games.