A basic design that isn't a gimmick

Yoji Yamamoto's 1987 logo for Japan Railways.

Having accumulated a growing amount of debt the national railway of Japan was privatised in 1987 and split into seven for-profit railway companies; six regional passenger services and one freight service. These were collectively called the Japan Railways Group or the JR Group.

Normally, each new company would have had a new logo decided on by the management of these new entities. However, just like the post-war split of Mitsubishi, a single logo was felt to have been, in some ways, more useful and reassuring. Further, based on the feedback of JNR employees, it was decided that a single new visual identity for the network should be designed and applied all at once.

On November 28, 1986, the same day that the JNR privatisation bill was passed, Nippon Design Center (NDC) (also read: TEPCO) was commissioned to begin development on the new image. The NDC team included Creative Director Yusuke Kaji, Art Director and designer Yoji Yamamoto, Supervising editor Kazumasa Nagai and Producer Ikuo Kenmori. The communications agency DENTSU were also involved.

Continue reading to see concepts and final design, as well as the logotypes, colour palette and JR train liveries. Learn about the basic concept and the rush to implement this overnight.

While the post-privatisation name would be ‘JR Group’, there were two potential directions for the design of the logo, JR (Japan Railway) and NR (Nippon Railway). This was a time when using ‘J’ wasn’t as common as it is today (see: NTT). The decision to use either JR or NR would be dependant on whether one or the other worked better as a logo. Designer Yoji Yamamoto later recalled that he was really excited about this opportunity.

The rail network would relaunch under the new image on April 1st, 1987, giving Yamamoto less than 124 days to deliver the final design and prepare assets for a press release.