Ashgabat 2017 Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games - Original Logo Presentation (Circa 2016)
Copyright (c) 2016 Ashgabat Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games Organizing Committee
The Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games, or AIMAG, is a multi-sport competition sanctioned by the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) that is consisted of indoor and martial arts events with TV broadcasting potential, some of which were not contested at the Asian Games and Asian Winter Games programmes and are not Olympic sports.
The 2017 Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games were held in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan from 17 to 27 September 2017. The Turkmen capital became the third in the former Soviet states to have hosted an event sanctioned by the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA), following Almaty and Astana (now known as Nur-Sultan) in Kazakhstan, which both jointly held the Asian Winter Games in 2011.
In circa 2016, Ashgabat-based Belli Creative Studio had contributed the designs for the overall look and feel of the 2017 AIMAG. Perhaps, the firm also made the initial designs for the sport pictograms, the mascot Wepaly the Central Asian shepherd dog, as well as what would've been the official logo of the event.
As usual, the logo portrays and embodies the Games' key theme of health, inspiration and friendship. The logo depicts the image of an Akhal-teke, the national horse of Turkmenistan that is renowned for its speed, endurance and intelligence, and as depicted in the emblem, it is said to represent health. Surrounding the horse was the crescent from the Turkmen flag, representing inspiration, and the sun - the ensign of the OCA and the Asian Games itself - symbolizes friendship.
The proposed design by Belli Creative Studio enriches some elements from the existing logo (from the Akhal-Teke horse to the crescent) and supplementing them with bolder colors. While yellow and green is kept in that prototype logo to respectively symbolize the Karakum desert and the flora and fauna that covers the Turkmen mountains, the crescent recoloured itself to blue to represent the Caspian Sea. Additionally, a curve is added within the proposed logo to signify the Gochak, a traditional Turkmen ornament taking the form of a horn which can be found throughout history and modern day in art design, national dress and jewelry.
While there's news circulating that Turkmenistan's president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov turned down on Wepaly's initial mascot design; possibly for not being traditional enough or due to poor public reception, the prototype logo was also rejected alongside the proposed pictograms. But somehow, organizers had decided to keep the overall look and especially the wordmark from Belli Creative Studio's proposed emblem while accompanying the existing Akhal-Teke horse logo for the Games itself.
