Saskatoon student devises graphics for Olympic sleds
Design inspired by high-flying images inscribed on RCAF’s Canada 150 jet
Canada’s Olympic bobsled and skeleton teams were named in Calgary on Wednesday, and with the announcement came the unveiling of the new-look sleds they will take down the tracks at the Pyeongchang Games.
That’s when everything sunk in for the artist behind the new design, Josh Dornan. The 27-yearold graphic design student from Saskatoon is in his final year of study at Toronto’s George Brown College and was on stage for the announcement.
“I felt like ... in a way, it was my moment as well for myself, where I was really proud of what I did and to be able to sit up there with all those Olympians was kind of my proof we did something awesome,” he said via telephone from Calgary.
“Dornan was hired on after he contacted Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton, offering to design the sleds for this year’s Games if they didn’t already have a designer. He knew BCS used a student design for the sleds they used at the Sochi Games in 2014.
His design is based on the Canada 150 CF-18 that toured the country last year. The celebratory CF-18’s look was created by Jim Belliveau, a former 410 Squadron graphic designer. Dornan saw the CF-18 at a Toronto FC soccer game.
The theme itself was inspired by the bond formed between the athletes and the Royal Canadian Air Force. In the lead-up to the 2018 Games, RCAF members helped bobsled and skeleton athletes mentally prepare for competition.
“It (was) an incredible, powerful, national flag really that was streaking across the sky, and so, when we started to consider what we wanted to do with this air force partnership, it was pretty obvious; you could draw those parallels easily between the sport of bobsled or skeleton and a jet fighter pilot,” Dornan said.
“We wanted to take something that would instil a lot of national pride in people and also something people would be able to recognize.”
The challenge was to take Belliveau’s original concept and adapt it for the sleds, and in doing so also make each team’s sled look unique.
Dornan wasn’t nervous about Wednesday’s unveiling. Rather, he was breathing easy after he saw the sleds assembled, he said.
“Even though it may be scary to put your work out there, it’s a lot easier to put your work out there when you love it, when you know that it’s the best that it could be,” he said.
Moose Jaw’s Ben Coakwell is the lone athlete from Saskatchewan named to the 2018 bobsled team. The former Huskie football player also represented Canada at Sochi.