TOWN LOGOS

Japanese town logos - official symbols designed to communicate the identity of each municipality — come in a vast array of shapes and colors. Many of these municipal symbols incorporate typographical elements (particularly kanji, hiragana, katakana, and Roman letters) into their designs. In most cases, the stylized characters are straightforward and easy to spot (even if you don’t read Japanese), but sometimes you have to bend your eyes to see them. The more complex logos encode the name of the town into a puzzle-like symbol that begs to be deciphered. Here are a few typographic town logos that make clever use of hiragana and katakana characters.

The design although modern could well be inspired by the family crests or Mon used in the Tokugawa Shogunate era, still widely used today. The next time you enter a Japanese restaurant with the short curtains draping the entrance, look for the symbols on each panel. If it's a reputable (traditional) establishment, they should be able to tell you what those symbols stand for.

(original article from PinkTentacle)
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