3-2-1 is an Olympic and Sports Museum in Doha. We were appointed in 2012 to research, position, name and brand this museum, which is under construction at the Khalifa stadium and due to open next year.
It will be a national and international centre for sports history, heritage and knowledge, promoting and encouraging academic research. It's the first of its kind in the Middle East and has a clear remit to encourage greater take-up of sport by its local community. It also joins the Olympic Museum Network, which currently unites 22 Olympic museums worldwide.
Our first consultation stage involved meeting with and consulting with the myriad parties involved in the project, including the International Olympic Committee, and then producing a series of clear recommendations.
We then moved to the narrative and naming stage, where we consulted widely with Arabic linguists and the local team, looking at both English and Arabic names. The final decision was to name the museum '3-2-1' (as in 'three, two, one, go') as this was felt to be suitably universal across multiple languages and cultures.
The design route and symbol echo the vernacular and multiple styles of numbers found throughout all types of sport.
The scheme itself is a flexible system that allows for multiple placements and arrangements of the numerals, around which sports imagery intertwines.
As part of the design toolkit, we have also developed a bilingual typeface which allows the design and typographic approach to be consistent across both 'Latin' and Arabic applications. Here are some examples of the design in action, from billboards through to stationery and merchandise.
Credits
Typeface design: Tarek Atrissi