A total of 311 designs survived the first round of the second Tokyo Olympics logo competition, the organizers said Monday.
Twelve members of the logo selection committee voted on the designs after they were displayed on screens. The selection process was streamed on the Internet for about an hour to ensure transparency after the first attempt, earlier this year, was tainted by a rigged first round and by plagiarism allegations that eventually caused the winning design to be withdrawn.
"There was a collection of many good designs that are hard to choose from," Ryohei Miyata, chairman of the selection committee, said of the new submissions, which came in from people across the country.
In the second round, the committee will narrow down the entries to a shortlist of 100 to 200 by Jan. 7 to 9. The new logo will be unveiled in the spring, with the winner receiving a ¥1 million prize and an invitation to the Olympics' opening ceremony.
In the first contest, back in July, the winning design by Kenjiro Sano was scrapped in September after he was accused of copying a design from overseas.