Designers explain the symbolism behind the Brisbane 2032 Olympic emblem

Now, Kennedy’s helped shape Brisbane 2032.

“I finally made it to an Olympics,” he says.

It started to become pretty clear to the team that the cockatoo motif was the winner late last year, Kennedy says, but not before they had gone through about 400 different ideas.

“I won’t tell you what came close,” he says.

“There were four emblems on the short list, but this was actually always pretty much everyone’s favourite.

“There was one other that was there or thereabouts, but this one just immediately resonated with most people.

“We explored flora – a lot of iconic plant life and flowers, etc. We explored other fauna – the reef was a place that we looked at – and then other natural landmarks or places. The coastline, the forest, the Brisbane River.

“There were definitely some places where we said, ‘don’t play here’ – we probably didn’t want to use a crocodile, right?

“It was important in that decision-making process early on, as we made some strategic calls about not choosing natural icons that would exclude big parts of Queensland.”

The emblem, inadvertently released on Friday night, was the culmination of more than four years of blood, sweat and tears, and Kennedy, along with the rest of the design team, is excited – and nervous – to finally have it in the public domain.

But he realises it won’t be for everybody, and the rise of artificial intelligence will no doubt result in an avalanche of alternative emblems all over social media.

“You have to be a realist on it, and that we live in a world today where anyone who is a non-specialist can jump in and prompt something that they think might be OK,” he says.

“My favourite little line when I get asked this question is – just because you’ve got a voice doesn’t mean you should sing.

“What people don’t see is the incredible process behind getting to something that’s simple on a sheet of paper, which starts with a whole heap of research and insight, turns into a brand strategy, and then turns into a design process and a whole heap of craft to get to something as polished and as deep and meaningful as that.

“So, everyone’s welcome to have a go. If other people want to see if they can better it, they’re going to do it anyway. I can’t stop them.

“We just have to stand behind the work that we’ve done and the decisions that we’ve made. And we think we’ve done it all putting Queenslanders and Australians first, and hopefully, they see the joy in it that we see.”

For Brisbane 2032 marketing boss Brent Hill, it’s more than just seeing joy – it’s seeing the money.

The privately funded organising committee believes the emblem will unlock more revenue streams through commercial partnerships and Brisbane 2032 merchandise that’s already prepared for rollout.

Hill says the International Olympic Committee is excited by the Brisbane 2032 emblem and genuinely impressed by the process by which it was created.

A public campaign for the Australian white ibis, or “bin chicken”, to feature on the emblem was noticed, Hill says, and even gave the team the scope to land on the cheeky cockatoo.

“We were hand in glove [with the designers], late at night, leading into Christmas, agonising over fonts, exact positioning, exact colours,” he says.

“It’s been an incredible journey to be on, and something that you put a lot of time and effort into, but the payoff is huge.”

Ultimately, Hill says, the emblem is about putting a face to the Brisbane 2032 name.

“The really exciting thing about that is we’re starting to tell the world about what Brisbane and Queensland are all about, and what our Games are going to be like,” he says.

“People are starting to learn stuff about us. They’re going to learn about cockatoos. They’re going to learn about our reef. They’re going to learn about Brisbane, and they’re going to go, ‘My God, I need to get down there – this place is incredible’.”

Ahead for Brisbane 2032 is the official mascot or mascots. Does the cockatoo emblem offer a clue in that department?

“I’m interested just to see how it plays out in terms of how much people embrace this,” Hill says.

“We’ve got more to come. There are more things and more elements within the emblem that we can reveal that are really exciting. The more people embrace that, the more we can look at that and go, ‘What else could we do?’”

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