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Mother London's creative director develops infographics using Olympic rings to highlight world issues

By Jennifer Faull, Deputy Editor

Mother

July 31, 2012 | 3 min read

Whilst we have all ridiculed the elaborate rules laid out by LOCOG on Olympic brand hijacking - see The Drums very own Fauxlympics – Mother London’s creative director Gustavo Sousa has manipulated the iconic rings to highlight the global issues which can be forgotten in the excitement of the Games.

Brazilian artist, Sousa has used the five coloured rings as a representation of each of the five continents which take part in the Olympic Games. The ring sizes have been adapted to create a series of informative graphs about the issues the world faces today. Topics have ranged from general facts, such as the number of MacDonald's outlets in each continent, to statistics such as the number of people living with HIV.

The colour code for the graphs is as follows: Blue is Oceania (Australia and its proximate islands); Yellow is Africa; Black is Europe; Green is Asia; Red is the Americas.

The eye-opening project has become known simply as oceaniaeuropeamericasafricaasia and includes a total of 16 prints to represent each day of the Olympics. Initially, the artist never revealed a key for the infographics; "You can almost figure that out as you read through; I thought that process of discovery was interesting,” Sousa has said.

"The rings represent healthy competition and union, but we know the world isn’t perfect. Maybe understanding the differences is the first step to try to make things more equal."