Skip to content

The Olympians

From 1964 to 2020
Main navigation
  • 1964 Posts
  • 2020 Posts
  • Recommendations
  • Book Reviews
  • About

t-shirt

The Tokyo 2020 Emblem Scandal: You Too Can Own the T-Shirt

2020-logo-and-tehatre-de-liege-logo-compared

It was for many weeks, a joke.

The Tokyo 2020 emblem was announced in July of 2015, the end of an international competition where over 100 designs were entered. When the black, gold, gray and red design of geometric shapes debuted, it was not only greeted with an underwhelming yawn, it was slapped with a lawsuit for plagiarism. The designer of the logo for a theater in Belgium felt that the design, sans the red circle, was essentially the same.

For weeks, the designer of the winning emblem, Kenjiro Sano, twisted in the wind as the poo poo hit the fan. In this day and age of the internet and social media, other examples of possible plagiarism by Sano’s firm popped up. Eventually, Tokyo2020 withdrew its supports of Sano’s logo, and started a second competition for a new design.

plagiarized-tokyo-2020-logo-tshirt

What I found interesting is that you can buy a T-shirt with the Sano logo on Amazon. In fact, I did, as you can see above. The quality of the shirt is so so, but for 11 bucks I have a shirt that is essentially vestimenta non grata. (You can’t find this shirt on Amazon Japan.)

What’s even funnier – you can buy a  rip off of Sano’s rip off on Amazon for eight dollars more! Check out the design below, where the red circle was moved from upper right to lower right.

tokyo-2020-emblem-rip-off-shirt

Continue reading →

Share or print this:

  • Share on X (Opens in new window) X
  • Share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook
  • Share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn
  • Share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest
  • Share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit
  • Print (Opens in new window) Print
  • More
  • Email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
  • Share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr

Like this:

Like Loading...
January 9, 2017 Japan, Pop Culture, Tokyo 2020
Powered by WordPress.com.
  • Home
  • 1964 Articles
  • About
  • Copyright Authorization
  • Recommendations
  • Referrals for the Book “1964: The Greatest Year in the History of Japan”
Secondary navigation
  • Search

Begin typing your search above and press return to search. Press Esc to cancel.

 

Loading Comments...
 

You must be logged in to post a comment.

    %d