The man behind the last decade of NBC Olympic logos

Mitch Monson, the man behind the last decade of NBC’s Olympic logos, never imagined he’d become a designer. His plan was to join the military.

“I’d always been one of those kids that drew all the time and spent a lot of time in art classes, but never really thought it was going to be a career,” Monson, who is now the executive director of creative and partnerships at brand studio Sibling Rivalry, told Marketing Brew.

After freelancing post-college, Monson ended up starting his own production and design agency and working with clients like Prince, which he said “opened up a bunch of worlds” for his career. Years later, in 2014, Monson was approached by NBC Olympics to visualize a logo design for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games coverage while working at branding and design firm Trollbäck+Company.

As an athlete himself, Monson said that “all [he] really wanted to do as a kid was to…be part of the Olympics in some way.” His résumé now includes the NBC logos for the Games in Rio 2016, PyeongChang 2018, Tokyo 2020, and Paris 2024.

We spoke with Monson about what goes into designing a logo for a broadcast viewed by millions, and what’s next after the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

What’s in a logo?

When Monson was first approached by NBC Olympics over 10 years ago, he said the network was looking to shift away from its traditional Olympics design approach, which was “very shield-based and landmark-based,” in the hopes of appealing to a broader audience.

“They really hired us to completely break that whole design aesthetic and look at something that was fresher and more inclusive so male and female audiences would respond well to it,” Monson said. “That’s kind of been our mantra ever since. We’re reinventing all the way into what we’ve done for Paris.”

When designing an Olympic logo, Monson said he and his team research the architecture, art, graphic design, and other cultural influences related to the host city. In total, the research, design, and finalization process begins about two years prior to the actual games.

“We do hundreds of versions of the final logo before we get it to a final mark,” he said.

This year’s logo features a custom font that draws inspiration from the Art Nouveau style seen in settings like Parisian Metro stations. The diamond-shaped container around the logo, he said, is inspired by the underside view of the Eiffel Tower, and the shape of the “A” in “Paris” is also inspired by the iconic landmark.

“In some cases, you might see some of [the design elements] as being on the nose,” he said. “But the thing is, it has to work for a US audience so when they see it, they have to immediately connect with, ‘Where is this in the world?’”

Over the years, Monson said his team has brought “nontraditional” collaborators into the design process, ranging from illustrators and sculptors to matte painters from Marvel movies. “We always bring them into the team to give us a fresh take on something,” he said.

With the Tokyo 2020 logo, Monson said an external illustrator was brought in for that project to help perfect the brush look of the logo. The “K,” he said, was pulled from Japanese kanji script, with the character representing the word “human.”

When it comes to working with the International Olympic Committee, Monson said the group offers creative freedom, mostly reviewing for spec and sizing requirements on mark-protected images like the Olympic rings. The IOC didn’t require any other design consistencies with its official Paris 2024 Olympic Games logo, he said.

With the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan on the horizon, Monson said the future of his Olympic work depends on one key communication.

“I think my favorite part of the whole journey is I literally just get a text [from NBC Sports’ Wade Echer] that says, ‘Are you available?’ And I know just those words mean, ‘We’re going to be talking about the Olympics today,” Monson said. “Hopefully I keep getting a lot of those texts into the future.”