Tokyo Wants Your Logo Ideas for the 2020 Olympics

After this summer's drama surrounding its potentially plagiarized logo, the Tokyo Organizing Committee is putting its branding decisions to the people.

Rather than hire another professional designer to create the replacement logo for Kenjiro Sano's deposed work—which was thrown out after Belgian designer Olivier Debie raised concerns over its similarity to his own work—the organizers have launched a public competition. Applicants must be at least 18 years old, and either a native of Japan or a foreign national with the right to live in Japan. No design experience is required. Themes to consider are:

“The power of sport”, “Typifying Tokyo and/or Japan”, “World peace”, “Exerting the utmost efforts and striving to achieve a personal best,”, “Inclusivity”, “Innovation and Futuristic”, “Regeneration (ability to recover from the 2011 disaster)."

It's possible the Tokyo Organizing Committee is sick and tired of dealing with designers (besides the controversy over Sano's logo, the Japanese government scrapped Zaha Hadid's $2 billion stadium and started over from scratch), and decided to just throw its hands up and be done.

Or, more optimistically, perhaps the new submission criteria are meant to democratize the creation of a symbol that will celebrate people of all kinds. It's worked before: the original American Airlines logo was designed by a traffic manager who entered the company's open call for submissions.