Environmental graphics establish a particular sense of place through the use of two- and three-dimensional forms, graphics, and signage. The 1984 Olympics is an interesting example of a project requiring this kind of design treatment. The different communication needs of the various Olympics participants—athletes, officials, spectators, support crews, and television viewers—together with the project's brief use, combined to create an environmental-design problem of daunting dimension and complexity.

In the 1984 Los Angeles Games, the focus was on how a multicultural American city could embrace and international event. Arrangements were basic and low-budget. Events, planned to be cost-conscious and inclusive, were integrated into Los Angeles rather than isolated from it. Old athletic stadiums were retrofitted rather than replaced with new ones. These ideas and values, as well as the celebratory, international nature of the Olympics, needed to be expressed in its environmental design.

One of the most important considerations was to design a visual system that would provide identity and unity for individual events that were scattered throughout an existing urban environment. Through the use of color and light, the visual system highlighted the geographic and climatic connection between Los Angeles and the Mediterranean environment of the original Greek Games. The graphics expressed celebration, while the three-dimensional physical forms were a kind of “instant architecture”—sonotubes, scaffolding, and existing surfaces were signed and painted with the visual system. The clarity and exuberance of the system brought the pieces together in a cohesive, immediately recognizable way.

Under the direction of Sussman/Prejza, the design took form in workshops and warehouses all over the city. Logistics—the physical scope of the design and the time required for its development and installation—demanded that the designers exhibit not only skill with images, symbols, signs, and model making but also considerable design-planning expertise.