We’re only 3 days in and already September has been a busy month in the world of logos. The final Bank Holiday of the year came along and before the dust had even settled we had a massive scandal popped up.
Jump back to July 24th and the worlds media had gathered in Tokyo for the unveiling of the Olympic and Paralympic games logos that will be hosted by the Asian superpower in 2020, and this is where we get the ugly side of things. Created by Japanese artist Kenjiro Sato, the emblem was to “reflect the vibrant nature of the city and the welcoming spirit of its citizens” whilst “The red of the circle represents the power of every beating heart” – it also conveniently looks a lot like the Japanese flag, however public reaction did not go down too tell…
“I thought the London 2012 logo was an all time low for Olympic emblems, but the Tokyo 2020 logo just announced is truly awful!!!!!” said one Twitter user, others noted how similar it was to the here for Japan’s main football league (they had a point), or simply it was a Pong paddle and ball. Either way, it was fair to say it did not go down well.
Things became even more interesting this month though, when it was announced that the Tokyo logo was to be scrapped amid plagiarism claims, and not from the Japanese football league either. No, it was from a Belgian artist called Olivier Debie who had branded the Theatre de Liege back in 2013 and had filed a lawsuit preventing it from being used for the games. So back to the drawing board for Tokyo, as for Sano’s career, who knows. Have a look here for yourself and see what you think.
And if that wasn’t enough, that tiny company known as Google unveiled a new logo for their core search services; not too long after unveiling their new Alphabet arm of the company which will look after all the weird and wonderful technology they are developing. The new logo is not a million miles away from what it already was, colours are the same but they have smoothed things out a bit and dropped the serifs. Seemingly due to people ‘now reaching Google on lots of mobile devices rather than just desktop computers.’
So there we have it, a very brief look into the massive changes that have occurred already this month. Will there be more to come? Most probably.