Every Channel at Once: Michal Bednarski’s Illustrations for Fast Company

Gold Zone is Peacock’s live Olympics broadcast that cuts between events as they unfold simultaneously in real time, so the viewer catches every pivotal moment without committing to any single competition from start to finish.

In Michal Bednarski’s lead illustration, the figures are flat, constructed from geometric shapes and rendered with a grain texture that gives them the feel of stamped fabric.

The standalone figures recall the Olympic pictogram tradition that Otl Aicher defined for the 1972 Munich Games. Simplified bodies reduced to geometric essentials, stripped of individual identity so the sport itself becomes the subject.

Bednarski softens the pictogram’s hard edges with color and texture, warming the diagrammatic language without abandoning its logic. And the connection deepens the conceptual work of the assignment.