Gulnar Rahimzade - Olympic Games Tokyo 2020

Marketing Materials for National Olympic Committee of Azerbaijan during Olympic Games Tokyo 2020

Role: Art Direction, Graphic Design, Motion Design

A significant highlight of my career was leading the design team for the National Olympic Committee of Azerbaijan during the Tokyo 2020 games. In this role, I managed the creation and preparation of all printable promotional materials, including team t-shirts, flags, folders, and posters. Additionally, I developed a comprehensive visual guideline for the committee's social media presence, ensuring consistent and engaging content. I also had the privilege of creating the main promotional video for the team and designing templates for other videos shared throughout the games.

I designed the key visual used by the National Olympic Committee of Azerbaijan during the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. The visual was featured on various promotional materials, both digital and physical. The most challenging and rewarding aspect was creating a collage of Azerbaijan’s athletes, seamlessly blending them into a cohesive design. The poster emphasized unity and strength under the tagline "Stronger Together," representing the collective effort of athletes and partners, proudly highlighting both the athletes and key sponsors of the event.

Additionally, I created the main promotional video. This video, adapted into multiple sizes and languages, followed the same cohesive design principles, incorporating motion design techniques to bring the visuals to life across formats and languages.

Before the event began, I designed a series of countdown posters, creatively aligning them with the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. To maintain consistency with the visual identity, I sourced and edited stock images of Tokyo, ensuring they matched the color scheme and branding guidelines. The posters featured elements from the design guidelines, along with bold typography highlighting the days remaining. These posters were strategically used to build anticipation and excitement for the event, showcasing my ability to blend graphic design with effective promotional content for large-scale campaigns.

I also designed a wide array of print materials, including flags and t-shirts worn by athletes at the venue, all adhering to the unified branding I developed for the National Olympic Committee. Additionally, I created roll-ups, posters, and other printed collateral used by the Olympic Team members to decorate Azerbaijan's team section during the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. These print assets ensured a consistent brand presence, enhancing visibility and team spirit through impactful design. This project highlights my expertise in print design, branding, and event-related visual communication.

For this project, our agency formed a dedicated team consisting of a social media manager, a designer, and a copywriter to ensure timely and real-time updates of the athletes' performances and results on the Olympic team's social media channels, even with the time zone difference. As the head of the design team, I proactively developed design guidelines and created both image and video templates in advance to streamline the process. These templates, including game schedules, results, medal announcements, and daily highlights, enabled quick and consistent design updates. For instance, the medal announcement template allowed the team to simply swap out the athlete's name, photo, and medal type, ensuring that posts could be generated almost immediately after each event. This process optimization not only saved time but also ensured high-quality motion and graphic design for social media during the games, effectively maintaining brand consistency.

To engage more viewers during the games, our agency introduced interactive features to boost audience participation. One of the key initiatives was the creation of a Facebook frame, allowing fans to display their support for the national team. Additionally, following the agency's decision, I designed and animated custom Instagram stickers. After each medal announcement, we encouraged fans to share the posts using these newly designed stickers, generating increased social media engagement and showing their support for the athletes. These elements added a dynamic motion design component to the campaign's interactivity.

In addition to creating static imagery and print files, I developed video templates, such as openers and closers, to maintain visual consistency across all media. As the art director, I established the overall visual style for the videos, ensuring they aligned with the campaign's design guidelines. Once the visual framework was set, the motion designer from my team utilized these templates and style guidelines to produce animations and video content. This cohesive approach helped streamline production and maintain branding consistency across all video outputs.

Credits:

Client:   The National Olympic Committee of Azerbaijan
Agency:   Endorphin
Project Coordinator:   Orkhan Karimov
Project Manager:   Farhad Shabanov
Account Manager:   Rabiyat Heydarli
Creative Director:   Sabina Rustamli
Art Director:   Gulnar Rahimzade
Designers:   Gulnar Rahimzade, Famil Namazov, Ramin Farzullayev
Motion Designer:   Gulnar Rahimzade, Nicat Samadov
Copywriter:   Elmar Rza
Videographer:   Bahruz Qurbanli
Digital Manager:   Mushfig Shiraliyev
Social Media Manager:   Rufat Aliyev