Word: sussman
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Instead of monumental stone and steel, the design features banners, bunting and balloons fluttering in the wind, lightweight fantasy structures jutting into the sky, odd-shaped cardboard-and-fabric tents sheltering the crowds. What first strikes the eye is the color scheme created by Deborah Sussman, the graphic designer in charge of all the Olympic imagery. Says Sussman: "The palette consists of unexpected, stimulating juxtapositions that instantly separate the Olympic pageantry from the everyday environment, the drabness of permanent institutions, industries, streets-hot magenta, vermilion and chrome yellow, set off by aqua. They are Mediterranean colors but also suggest Mexican...
...generally lend settings color, shape and order. Rented steel scaffolding has been bolted into lighthearted, ephemeral structures from which fabric waves. Thin, tubular balloons, some hundreds of feet long, sway in the air like giant streamers. Chain-link fences, essential for security, wear miles of fabric blazoned with Sussman's colors in stars and bars, as well as a special confetti pattern...
...changes would be highly visible evidence of the Olympic presence. The organizing committee agreed to coordinate this visibility and turned the job over to Jerde's firm, The Jerde Partnership, which specializes in creating an urban ambience for shopping centers and commercial districts. Jerde in turn recruited Designer Sussman, 53, a former art director in the office of Charles and Ray Eames, who now has her own firm with her husband Paul Prejza. Says L.A.O.O.C. General Manager Harry L. Usher: "We wanted to get away from the trivial, and yet not get solemnly hooked into red, white and blue...
Jerde and Sussman's strategy may also turn out to be Los Angeles' most important contribution to future Olympics...
...seems to be that so much concentration is poured into work and marriage that little time, or energy, is left over. The commuters, say researchers, single-mindedly await the day when they can become ordinary one-city folk again."They are functioning on 'deferred gratification,' " says Sociologist Sussman. They are, in other words, the new troops of the Protestant ethic, enduring hardship now for the sake of better days ahead. - By John Leo. Reported by Maureen Dowd/ Washington and Nancy Pierce Williamson/New York, with other bureaus