The 1972 Olympics featured a brilliantly designed set of wordless images, or pictograms, each of which symbolised a particular area of sporting activity. The pictograms each represented human figures, reduced to circles and rectangles but drawn in such a way that the nature of the activity represented was perfectly clear to the viewer.
These pictograms were so effective at communicating essential information in a dynamic, engaging way that they have exerted a strong influence on subsequent signage used at the games.
In this lesson children will learn to make observational drawings of each other in dynamic sporting poses, to reduce these drawings to their essential visual elements to create pictograms that represent Olympic events and to extend their work into collage.
Browse more KS2 art ideas and Olympics teaching resources.
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