The Organising Committee for the Olympic Winter Games in Calgary decided to use the winter sports pictograms which are part of a set of sports pictograms designed by Gerhard Joksch & Otl Aicher, creators of the pictograms for the 1972 Olympic Summer Games in Munich. For the first time they were converted into two different versions: a rectangle and a circle.
Additions were the symbols for the demonstration sports of curling and freestyle. The Nordic combination competitors also had their own sign. For the opening and closing ceremony the same pictogram was used, once on a white and once on a black background. They were used on the entry tickets, official publications, the Olympic torch, in the realm of souvenirs and on the look of the Games.