Kayla Baxter - Olympics, Milan 2026

Rebranding the Olympics

The Project

In this 6 week project we had to design the aesthetics around an Olympic Games of our choosing, and I chose the Winter 2026 Olympics in Milan, Italy. We had to make a family of designs, illustrations, and an interactive product that supported the branding of our chosen Games.

Final Assets Created

- A prototype of an app designed specifically for the Milan 2026 Olympic Games

- A Winter 2026 Olympic logo for Milan, Italy

- 3 mock-ups of merchandise

- 3 poster designs

Design Direction

The design direction I went with for all the branding came about after discovering that Milan is known as the luxury fashion capitol of the world. As the 2026 Olympics are being held in Milan, Italy, I knew I wanted that to play a part in the look of my rebrand. I wanted every piece of the designs to say sleek and clean.

The App

Within my Figma app prototype, you can see current news surrounding the event, you can learn about the teams from different countries and see their scores and medals, you can purchase merchandise, and you can watch short-form reel videos related to the Olympics.

When brainstorming ways to bring traffic to my app, I thought of how so many apps include short-form videos and how it would be interesting if the official Olympics app and Tiktok had a 'collaboration' where you could post Olympic-related Tiktoks on the app. This would encourage people to spend more time on the app and relay news or interesting content in a way that younger audiences could appreciate.

The Logo

In my initial sketches, I played around with the idea of creating or symbolizing the iconic Olympic rings with something else. Classic Italian architecture as seen on the islands of Murano and Burano, hot air balloons, the symbol of Milan (a biscione), and a few other ideas. This experimentation lead me to the see a connection between the word 'OLYMPICS' and the 6 rings. After many different iterations, I eventually was able to transform the word 'OLYMPICS' into the 6 rings. I brought the idea to life in Illustrator and after doing some clean-ups and adjustments, my 2026 Milan Italy logo was formed.

The Merchandise

With the power of Photoshop, I mocked up 3 different merch items that could be sold on this Olympics app. They were a hoodie, a beanie, and a tote bag with a design on both the front and back. These merchandise choices were a result of research on what is generally sold at the Olympics, as well as type of climate that Milan will have in the winter.

All photos used in this project were gathered from Adobe Stock and Unsplash.

2026 Olympic Logo Redesign