Jessica Deseo, writing for PRINT Magazine, reports on a talk by Ric Edwards, VP of Brand Design at LA28. His challenge: branding an Olympics for a city that resists a single identity. Edwards on LA:

“There’s no one version of it. You would do a disservice if you limited it to one story.”

I spent a few years in Los Angeles and visit regularly. It’s sprawling and each area is distinct. Edwards is right. So instead of a fixed logo, LA28 built a system. The “A” in the emblem is a canvas, reinterpreted by athletes, artists, and communities. The L, 2, and 8 are set in different typefaces. The brand holds many narratives rather than collapsing into one.

“We’re trying to be a stage for all of those stories.”

That word, “stage,” is the whole strategy in one sentence. A stage doesn’t perform. It creates the conditions for others to perform on it. That’s a fundamentally different job than traditional branding, which is usually about control: one mark, one voice, one set of guidelines. LA28 is designing for distributed authorship at global scale, and Edwards is honest about what that costs:

“Operationally, it’s a nightmare.”

Every variation of the emblem has to work across stadiums, broadcast, merchandise, and digital. And then each creative contribution has to pass through legal, production, and brand governance. The ambition is real, and so is the complexity behind it. The Olympics is…well…the Olympics of branding.