On Participation & Cultural Environments
How can a global sports brand participate meaningfully in local culture and help bring people closer to sport?
Located within communities across Rio de Janeiro, the Vilas Olímpicas already played an important social role, providing access to sport, recreation and collective experience. The challenge was not simply one of visibility, but of contribution: how could Nike become part of an existing cultural ecosystem in a way that felt relevant, authentic and locally rooted?
The work explored how identity, infrastructure and participation could reinforce one another, bringing community, place and sport into closer relationship. Graphic interventions, signage, apparel, play structures and spatial applications transformed the facilities into a visible extension of the programme itself.
Roles
Creative Direction, co-creating concept development and visual identity development as part of a multidisciplinary team at Pharus Design, São Paulo for Nike Brasil.
The Context
The project was embedded in existing public infrastructure. The Vilas Olímpicas are community sports centres, often located in areas with limited access to resources, offering free activities to children and young people. Rather than building something new, the work meant engaging with what was already there and strengthening it, supporting spaces, people and structures that were already part of daily life.
The project spanned 21 locations across the city, each embedded in its own community, each with its own identity and reality. The task was to create a visual system that could hold that diversity while still feeling coherent, bring in the brand and connect without flattening difference.
The Work
Work started from the places themselves. The lines of the courts, the markings on the ground, the way space is used became the foundation for the identity. Each location developed its own typographic expression within a shared system.
On Contribution
The work existed alongside a broader effort, including facility improvements, equipment, training for teachers and ongoing programs that reached thousands of young people over multiple years. The identity became one layer within that ecosystem, not leading it but supporting and strengthening its presence. In this context, branding is not just about how something looks, it is about how it exists in the world, who it is for and what it leaves behind.
When a brand becomes part of a place, it takes on a different role, not just communicating but participating, becoming part of something that already exists and contributing to it.
