They’ve been passing on messages for decades. You’ve probably already seen them, on the walls of a workshop or the tables of a break room, the little characters from Olympe leaflets and posters.
It’s a well-known fact that humor is a hit in Quebec. The media are full of it, advertisers use it to sell anything and everything, and even politicians dabble in it from time to time… not always successfully, it has to be said. In short, in our country, humor is an excellent vehicle for getting messages across.
If it’s good for pitou…
If humor can be used to sell just about anything, from water heaters to beer to banking services, surely it can be used to convey awareness messages, right? At least, that’s what Olympe’s CEO and his team thought when, in the early 90s, they came up with the idea of creating the Olympe Educational Leaflet and adorning it with humorous illustrations to convey its awareness-raising messages.
It was this brainstorming that led to the birth of the little Olympe characters.
Draw me a picture
Well, that’s all well and good, but you’ve got to draw them!
After some in-house experimentation, it soon became clear that we needed to find an illustrator to bring our “miquettes”, as our forefathers called them, to life. It was then that Olympe approached an illustrator who worked for a nearby company and who had made a name for himself by creating the humorous illustrations that adorned the back page of Le Lingot, a newspaper for employees and retirees of Alcan (now Rio Tinto).
Initially working as a freelancer, the illustrator in question, whom we’ll call Hervé, quickly made the leap to becoming a full-fledged member of the Olympe team. It was from his imagination and, above all, from the tip of his pencil that the Olympe characters took shape.
Even the characters are evolving
Initially monochrome due to printing constraints limiting the number of colors available, the characters eventually took on color.
But that’s not the end of their evolution. Initially predominantly male, rather wiry and usually portrayed in work-related situations, the Olympe characters and their stories have diversified over the years. Diversity of gender, silhouette, age and culture, but also diversity of themes.
Indeed, while the messages conveyed by the Olympe educational leaflet and its playful characters initially revolved around safety in the workplace, the range of subjects covered has also evolved and broadened over the years to include off-the-job safety, physical and mental health, interpersonal relationships, nutrition, healthy lifestyle habits and even the environment.
Passing the torch
Somewhere around 2012, after almost 20 years of bringing the Olympe characters to life, their creator gave way to another talented illustrator, whom we’ll call Frédéric. With his distinctive touch, he has perpetuated the style for which the colorful, articulate characters in the Olympe publications are renowned.
Some green and some black
They’ve been through a lot, our characters. 350 to be precise. Sometimes tragic, sometimes light-hearted, sometimes down-to-earth, sometimes allegorical, sometimes reflecting bad behavior or bad habits, sometimes preaching prudence or common sense, the illustrations featuring the Olympe characters have always been designed to provoke thought and encourage sensible behavior.
That’s the real legacy of the little Olympe characters.
By Hervé Charbonneau