THE Beijing 2022 organizing committee BOCOG on Thursday released on a New Year’s Eve gala on TV 30 pictograms for the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, which are inspired by Chinese calligraphy and seal carving.

The pictograms will also have a kinetic form to attract the younger generation to Beijing 2022 and the millennium-old craft, a historic first for an Olympic Winter Games.

“Our earnest hope is to present China’s cultural system through these tiny sports logos. The Olympics is a platform for China to express itself, and these pictograms encompass its tradition and modernity,” said Lin Cunzhen, chief designer of the pictograms.

When the graver carves into the surface of a seal, chips are presented as ice and snow splashes when the “athletes” move in the animated pictograms.

Zhang Mingguan, an engraver and professor with China’s Central Academy of Fine Arts, who was in charge of carving out the designs to how they worked, believes kinetic pictograms add vigor into the traditional art.

“Some young people may feel calligraphy and carving are distant, so we want to deconstruct the art form and let them get acquainted and understand the crafts,” he said.

The style also brings back the memory of the 2008 Summer Games in the Chinese capital. The emblem for the city’s first-ever Olympics was a red Chinese seal enclosing a lively dancing figure that resembles the Chinese character “Jing,” which means capital.

According to Lin, the seal carving style demonstrates winter sports’ speed and strength and echoes the 2008 Games. This time the design captures the style of the Han Dynasty some 2,000 years ago, which was a golden age in Chinese seal carving. Although the sports logos resemble Chinese characters, they do not have a reference to any specific ones.

“These two designs will imprint the Olympic history the cultural mark of Beijing, which is the first city to host both Summer and Winter Games, and constitute a vivid example of how Olympic legacies are carried on,” said Lin.

The 30 pictograms include 24 for the Winter Olympics and six for the Paralympics.

(Xinhua)