The Olympic Coordinating Committee’s request for logo submissions was met with strong interest, but time will tell what the final selection will be.
For the first time in months, coordinators of Tokyo’s 2020 Olympic logo have some good news to share. After a plagiarism scandal prompted the emblem committee to scrap its earlier selection by artist Kenjiro Sano and call upon the public for submissions, the application form required to put an entry forth has been downloaded 52,000 times.
Ryohei Miyata, chairman of the organizers’ emblem committee, told the Japan Times that such a high number of downloads for the application form indicates that the public is paying “significant attention” to the “selection of the new emblems.”
However, this new round of entries means that the earlier applications, which lost to Kenjiro Sano’s design, are now also void. In wake of those developments, one high profile applicant decided that his submission should at least see the light of day. Kenya Hara, a world renowned Japanese designer and founder of the Hara Design Institute, has published his take on the logo, which features dark red emblems meant to symbolize heartbeats and celestial bodies. In a statement published with the logo, Hara wrote that he chose red for his design because it “is a traditional Japanese color and also indicates liveliness and passion.” He then acknowledged that his design is no longer eligible, but added that the number of participants in the new competition are “likely to soar,” and ended on an optimistic note: “It is impossible to predict how this race turns out to be, but I anticipate the the success of Tokyo Olympic 2020 with a positive feeling.” Hara’s design can be seen in detail here.
–Kyle Mullin
Image: Kenya Hara
