Design and the 2026 Winter Olympics

I was a ten-year old hockey player when the greatest Winter Olympics ever happened in 1980. So, this is my favorite quadrennial event.

First thing that struck me this year was the super cool duo-tone icons Peacock created for their TV app.

Look at these beauties!

Sorted from favorite to least favorite. After hockey, it’s curling and skiing around shooting stuff for me. I loved the bobsled and luge back in 1980, but my tastes have changed somewhat. I miss ski flying, which was ski jumping, but to the extreme. They discontinued it after a couple jumpers went into orbit. Now, I really like the snowboard roller-derby race down the mountain.

Resplendent!

Then there’s the official app. It gets its most important function exactly right. The event calendar loads with in-progress events scroll down to see the future, up to see completed events. Perfect. Once you click on an event, you can click on the country flag to see the roster for that team or click the athlete in individual sports. You don’t get a ton of info on the athlete pages, but you get hometown and the athlete’s social links.

Side note: If you have a ten-dollar bill handy, check it out. The most beautiful of our current currency, I have a spread of them as my phone background.

Insert sad trombone failure tune here

This “26” (Zb, UΔ, 2G?), on the other hand, might be the handy work of the infamous Inver Grove Heiqhts water-tower designer.

The bad 26, being the primary logo for the games, is prominent and ubiquitous. The games kicked off with curling. On every throw, the rocks slide past this logo living large on the ice. It stands out among the worst in this set along with Sochi and PyeongChang. Squaw Valley ’60 is cool. I can almost smell an envelope and letterhead with that stamped on ’em. Sapporo ’72 is sooo ’70s. We had those things all over the bottom of our bathtub. Innsbruck ’76 is an uninspired disappointment. Sarajevo, Calgary, and PyeongChang forgot how many sides a snowflake has, and I get what Vancouver was going for, but that rock man needs to look a little more athletic like Beijing. It’s abstract, but you can see a skater or skier in there.

The environmental design and branding have been very nice with the Aurora Borealis look on the hockey boards and dividing walls in other venues. And the way the biathlon course is nestled into the mountains is idyllic.

It took me a while to solve the 26 riddle. By comparison to the Peacock sport icons above, the official Milano Cortina icons definitely look like part of a set with the weak 26.

Once again, we have a winner in Lake Placid.

Two extremes in hockey-jersey design

Finland looks great. France? Eek. Germany’s yellows are a downgrade from the previous whites.

Meanwhile, Canada and Czechia have stepped up their look since the World Juniors in December-January.

Explainer videos

The official Olympic site wins this battle. Before the Olympics, I watched the explainer on Peacock and it was bad. I can’t find it now. They must have gotten some feedback and reconsidered.

See video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_uGg8mFVjs

But finally …

The finest art of the Olympics is in the moments created by the athletes.

Trade School Startup

John Glynn has probably trained more boiler operators in the state of Minnesota than anyone else. For years he’s taught classes through Minnesota State colleges and city and school district community ed programs. In 2025, his idea for John’s Boiler School, a private trade school, was a finalist for Scott County CDA’s Fast-Track Business Challenge for cash and in-kind prizes to help Scott County startups.

We worked together to polish is pitch presentation for the finals, creating a consistent brand look, and building a website and marketing plan.

We may have prepared the pitch too well. The judges were wowed by John’s pitch. It’s possible they thought “This guy doesn’t need our help.”

Logo development

John used AI to create a logo when he got started. He liked the look and feel. The logo had irrelevant artifacts and was not ready for professional use. We kept the essential elements that John identified with in the AI logo and created an official logo and brand color standard then created versions of the logo for a variety of uses.

WordPress website

John owned the domain boiler.school, so we started there with the basics, contact info and a quick explanation of John’s offerings in time for his pitch.

YouTube videos and channel

I cut part of the video of John’s pitch to the Fast-Track Business Challenge judges into an informational video and created a short boiler walkaround that demonstrates John’s teaching style.

Courses on Moodle LMS

We are currently building out the learning management system where we will make online courses and practice exams and other supplements to in-person courses.

Visit the John’s Boiler School learning management site where you can try a fifteen-minute sample class (login instructions on the page)

Sample class practice exam

Sample class practice exam

Registration and payment with WooCommerce ecommerce

John’s Boiler School now has a physical office with conference space where John will offer in-person classes. We’ll take registrations and payments on the WordPress website using the WooCommerce platform.

Business development and compliance

I’m relying on my long experience in higher education to ensure that John’s Boiler School takes advantage of the resources from and stays in compliance with the Minnesota Office of Higher Education (MOHE) when courses begin.

And as an added bonus

Thanks to John’s excellent teaching, in November 2025, I took the Minnesota Special Engineer license exam and scored 90. The Department of Labor and Industry requires a score of 70 to pass. So, if you need marketing help and someone to look after your low-pressure boiler, I am uniquely qualified.

Bogie boiler license

Bogie boiler license

Local Relay For Life Branding

In 2023, my childhood cancer survivor daughter Isabel and I stumbled into the local Relay For Life group and event. We didn’t know what it was all about, but it gave her a new sense of community with other cancer survivors. We joined the planning committee for the following year, and I was determined to speed up the learning curve for the next person like me who finds the group and try to grow event attendance.

The group was relying on the American Cancer Society event registration website and a Facebook group to provide information online.

I asked all the questions I thought the community might have and set out to create an informational website, and that requires a memorable domain name.

People in the area immediately recognize that the three acronyms in Relay For Life IGH | SSP | WSP mean Inver Grove Heights, South St. Paul, and West St. Paul. These three communities all border each other and are very close, but smashing all those letters together would have made a terrible domain name: relayforlifeighsspwsp.org. And unless everyone remembered that the cities are alphabetized, people would be trying relayforlifeighwspssp or relayforlifewspighssp.org or who know what.

One thing those of us in all three cities have in common is US Highway 52 that runs between West St. Paul and South St. Paul and south through Inver Grove Heights. And we all love driving south on it and hate taking it north over the Mississippi River into the worst-designed quarter mile of road in America. I created relay52.org and a logo based on the highway sign.

The logo doesn’t replace the group’s name, but acts like a stamp on all materials that quickly let’s people know where to go for more information.

To drive event attendance, we created a Facebook page for the group. The page was then able to create Facebook events, join and post to local neighborhood groups, and send invites to the event. We spent twenty dollars on advertising through Facebook that was specifically aimed at driving event attendance by reaching audiences like friends of people who’d indicated interest in the event and followers of our food truck partners.