World Surf League x Teahupo’o Olympic Merch 2024

In collaboration with the World Surf League, we were commissioned to design the official merchandise collection for the 2024 Olympics in Teahupo’o, Tahiti, home to one of the most iconic and powerful waves in the world.

The brief was to create a unified yet culturally rich range for the six nations with WSL athletes competing at the Games: Brazil, France, Japan, USA, Italy, and Australia. Our goal was to craft a system that celebrated national identity while remaining visually and thematically cohesive under the WSL brand whilst also highlighting the iconic wave.

At the heart of the collection was the illustrated Teahupo’o wave a wave both naturally formidable and symbolically loaded within global surf culture. Capturing this wave accurately was pivotal. Its shape isn’t just a wave, it’s the wave. The curve, force, and energy of Teahupo’o had to be immediately recognizable. To achieve this, our team consisting of surfers, included an art director, illustrator, and technical clothing designer who all worked in close, iterative collaboration to ensure the wave’s illustrated form retained its iconic structure while integrating seamlessly across print and fabric applications.

Building on this central motif, we developed a flexible visual system by pairing the wave with native flora and fauna from each nation. These elements allowed us to design six unique country-specific illustrations that felt distinct yet interrelated. Each country’s version featured its own colour palette, signature animal, and botanical details that were all tied together by the unified wave form.

To maintain consistency across a collection of over 125 products including apparel, accessories, and surf-specific hardware, we introduced a minimalist badge system. This included each country’s name, a stylized national flag, and the tagline “Tahiti 2024,”.

The final collection spanned T-shirts, long sleeves, hoodies, rash vests, and accessories such as caps, socks, water bottles, and tote bags. From stadium crowds to shoreline spectators, it was a powerful moment to see fans proudly repping their nation, through a collection that fused cultural identity, world-class sport, and the raw energy of one of surfing’s greatest waves.