Tokyo Governor Yoichi Masuzoe has unveiled a new logo for the capital of Japan: &TOKYO (“and Tokyo”).
The white ampersand mark, centered in a-red circle, is meant to form a kind of slogan: you add yourself (your name, organization name, school, etc) before it, presenting yourself as “with” Tokyo, a city filled with interconnections and linked experiences.
Hakuhodo handled the logo project, specifically Kazufumi Nagai, for a cost of ¥130 million (around $1 million).
From later this month, hi-res versions of the logo will be available online so you can download the logo and add yourself to it. We fear this may open the floodgates to parody but Hakuhodo has made this rather anodyne video to suggest what is intended by the “andTokyo” campaign.
Look out for a brief glimpse of top model and actor Kiko Mizuhara (presumably costing another ¥130 million).
After the plagiarism allegations that brought down Kenjiro Sano and his design for the 2020 Olympics logo, in the process turning the whole PR campaign for the Games into an online joke, Tokyo Metropolitan Government is understandably taking precautions here.
They delayed the release of the new logo by two months to run checks to ensure there could be no credible allegations of copying or stealing made this time.
Well, inevitably, there have already been allegations of plagiarism, since today “citizen journalists” (aka netizens in disguise with axes to grind and plenty of time to kill) will always track something down you never thought of. You can run but you can’t hide from the noisy minority.
In this case, two candidates for “plagiarism” have been, rather unconvincingly, put forward: an insurance law firm in New Zealand called Jones & Co and Plug & See, a French eye-wear brand.
There are certainly superficial similarities but, if you search hard enough, you will always find a design in some corner of the world that looks a bit like yours.
At any rate, Plug & See have already stated that the Tokyo logo is categorically not a copy of theirs for technical reasons.
