Tokyo 2020 designer accused of plagiarism
What do you think of this new logo? I’m keen on it, as I love stencil typefaces and frequently play with them when I’m designing new logos.
In fact, when I rebranded, one of the ideas I had for APA was this:
I also like experimenting with negative space. So much can be done using a stencil as an initial guide then adding or changing elements to circles, triangles, squares or oblongs. Other designers must feel like me, so the chances are that you might design something similar to an existing artwork.
Olivier Debie doesn’t agree. He’s accused Kenjiro Sano, who created the Tokyo 2020 graphics, of plagiarising the logo he designed for the Theatre de Liege in 2011. He has shown the two side by side on his Facebook page to illustrate his point here.
My opinion is that it was pure luck that the two designs look similar. What do you think?
This issue created lots of controversy, and on 1 September the Tokyo Olympics organising committee scrapped the logo.
