Milano Cortina 2026: Olympic image-making in the age of Artificial Intelligence
The RAI promo for Milano Cortina 2026 and its vision of Olympic image-making in the age of artificial intelligence
When the Olympic flame went out in Milano Cortina 2026, what lingered was not a medal count but a vocabulary of images. Those visuals will determine how these Winter Games are remembered within sporting and design culture. Every Olympic edition ultimately distils into atmospheres, symbolic gestures, and broadcast moments that circulate far beyond the closing ceremony—and in Italy’s case, that visual memory carried particular weight.
Set against the Alpine landscapes of Lombardy and Veneto—and grounded in a national design heritage defined by precision and material intelligence—the visual identity of Milano Cortina 2026 emerged at a time when AI-driven image production and cinematic broadcast aesthetics are reshaping how global events are constructed and shared. The Games unfolded not only as a sporting competition but as a mediated visual system, where storytelling, abstraction and technological experimentation converged.
Figure skating reimagined in the RAI Milano Cortina 2026 promo, where AI-driven visuals and cinematic light transform athletic performance into immersive Olympic storytelling.Image courtesy of the author. The official promo developed for RAI set the tone, establishing a visual language where immersion and symbolic clarity served as organising principles. Creative direction came from Ced Pakusevskij, a tutor in the Visual area at Istituto Marangoni Milano and the Creative Director of FullScream Studio, who approached the commission as an exercise in narrative authorship within an institutional context. The task was to articulate a structure capable of bearing the emotional weight of a global event like the Winter Olympics while remaining anchored in the cultural and geographic realities of its host territories.
“The intuition was very clear from the start: we wanted to create something epic, something that could truly elevate the Olympic spirit, while staying deeply connected to the places and their identity,” Pakusevskij told Maze35.
That negotiation between scale and rootedness shaped every decision, ultimately defining the memory of Milano Cortina 2026 and placing its Olympic storytelling within a broader shift: how major cultural events construct meaning in an AI-accelerated era.
How Olympic Visual Strategy Is Built: Ced Pakusevskij’s Process Behind the RAI Promo
Although the final result feels immersive and expansive, Ced Pakusevskij’s process begins with decidedly pragmatic coordinates: timelines, budgets and communication objectives.
“Every project starts from very practical elements: timing, budget and a brief. From there, the process becomes fluid” – Ced Pakusevskij, Tutor at Istituto Marangoni Milano Design and Creative Director of FullScream Studio
Once those structural limits are clarified, narrative takes precedence. Story provides the architecture within which imagery can take form, ensuring that decisions align with a coherent conceptual spine. Only later do technology, image-making, and sound design consolidate that foundation.
Pakusevskij describes this phase as an alignment of layers, in which visual, sonic and emotional dimensions begin to intersect and call for orchestration. His role becomes one of calibration, guiding these elements towards coherence so that structure and imagination evolve as complementary forces.
Winter sport becomes elemental in Milano Cortina 2026’s visual language, merging snow, fire and motion through artificial intelligence and cinematic broadcast aesthetics.Image courtesy of the author.
Inside the Institutional Architecture of an Olympic Creative Commission
Projects linked to the Olympic Games inevitably involve multiple institutional interlocutors, each with their own procedural expectations and brand guidelines to respect. Yet the collaboration with RAI retained a degree of fluidity that kept creative dialogue active throughout: ideas flowed, were challenged, and adjustments emerged from constant exchange. Engagement with the International Olympic Committee followed a similarly rigorous logic, yet did not stifle experimentation.
The experience demonstrates how the complexity of institutional scale—when managed through clarity of vision and open communication—can support innovation rather than hinder it.
A close-up of the skate blade reflects the precision behind Milano Cortina 2026’s Olympic visual identity, where design heritage meets contemporary image-making technology.Image courtesy of the author.
What Does the Olympic Flame Represent in an Age of Abstraction?
For Pakusevskij and his team, the Winter Olympics were never approached solely as a sequence of competitions. The objective was to make visible a sense of shared energy that precedes and transcends athletic performance.
“The central idea was an energy awakening: a fire born beneath the snow that slowly emerges and involves everything and everyone” – Ced Pakusevskij
This metaphor became the conceptual axis, and figurative representation gave way to abstraction, allowing light, movement, materiality and music to function as a shared grammar through which emotion could circulate without translation. “Together, these elements allow us to express collective feeling without needing explanations,” added Pakusevskij.
The resulting aesthetic aligns more closely with cinematic world-building than with conventional broadcast graphics, drawing viewers into a state in which the Olympic spirit is felt without the need for explanation.
Artificial Intelligence and the Question of Longevity in Olympic Image-Making
One of the most complex creative decisions involved the expanded use of artificial intelligence—a tool Pakusevskij approached with equal parts curiosity and caution.
“We knew that AI visual languages evolve extremely fast. Some solutions can feel outdated very quickly” – Ced Pakusevskij
Conscious of this volatility, Pakusevskij oriented the project around conceptual integrity and symbolic consistency, privileging elements that resist technological obsolescence. “Rather than technique, we concentrated on what we can truly control: language, structure and meaning. That’s what gives a project longevity,” explained Pakusevskij. In this configuration, technology becomes one register within a broader authorship defined by intention.
An athlete surrounded by electric light evokes the “energy awakening” concept behind the RAI Milano Cortina 2026 promo, shaped by Ced Pakusevskij’s AI-informed creative direction. Image courtesy of the author.
Why Precision, Not Spectacle, Defines Contemporary Olympic Design
Within an image culture saturated with references, distinctiveness rarely derives from accumulation. Pakusevskij locates originality in precision, in the exact alignment between concept and brief that renders a project unmistakable. Strong projects, he explains, are instantly recognisable.
“Every design project works only if it’s built exactly for its brief” – Ced Pakusevskij
What Sustains Creative Direction Beyond Technology and Trends
In discussions with emerging designers who aspire to creative direction or visual storytelling, Pakusevskij redirected focus from technical virtuosity. Software evolves, and platforms change; what sustains a practice is intellectual breadth and cultural engagement.
“What matters most is constant experimentation, curiosity and exposure to art and the world,” said Pakusevskij. Equally significant is the cultivation of critical independence and personal integrity.
“Don’t idolise anything or anyone, especially in a system driven by algorithms that reward quantity over quality. Build your own vision” – Ced Pakusevskij
The aftermath of spectacle: Milano Cortina 2026 frames the Olympic body within abstraction, reinforcing its immersive visual strategy in the age of artificial intelligence.Image courtesy of the author.
Has Artificial Intelligence Shifted the Centre of Creative Authority?
In Pakusevskij’s view, artificial intelligence represents less a disruption of creativity than a relocation of its centre of gravity. As technical thresholds become increasingly accessible, differentiation migrates towards conceptual depth. “The technical threshold is already extremely high and increasingly accessible. The real difference now lies in the ‘why’, not the ‘how’,” he stated.
Narrative coherence, symbolic articulation and intentionality acquire renewed centrality, positioning authorship upstream of execution. Creativity endures, though its locus shifts towards meaning.
Concept silhouettes mapping winter disciplines during early visual development, revealing how Milano Cortina 2026 translated athletic movement into abstract forms before AI and cinematic rendering defined the final imagery. Image courtesy of the author.
What Milano Cortina 2026 Signals for the Future of Global Event Aesthetics
The Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics promo signals a new aesthetic lexicon for large-scale cultural communication—one in which cinema, design, abstraction and emerging technologies converge.
By privileging immersion over explanation and atmosphere over didacticism, the project sets a precedent for future global events, demonstrating how depth of intention can shape experience more powerfully than spectacle alone.