Daini Seikosha Co., Ltd. (currently Seiko Instruments Inc.) was established as the wristwatch manufacturer K. Hattori & Co., Ltd. In 1964 it served as the official timekeeper for the Tokyo Olympics and in 1970 it released the world’s first quartz watch.
Later, in 1981, it established Seiko Instruments U.S.A. as a sales company of increasingly diversified products distributed into North America, which then extended into Germany and the further into Europe.
Seiko Electronic Industry, as it became in 1981, secured its position as one of the world’s largest manufacturer of clocks and watches, and began to expand its business to other related fields such as electronic machinery, tools, and automation devices that utilised its ‘mechatronics’ technology.
On the occasion of the corporation’s 50th anniversary, Seiko embarked on the development of a new strategy and corporate identity (CI). The company was commonly known as ’SEIKO I’ all over the world and this would be formalised as part of the new CI.
Rei Yoshimura, working with collaborators XICO, Design League and typographer Taro Yamashita would be responsible for devising a new logo and corporate identity.
As part of the CI, Rei Yoshimura devised a new logo. This was composed of two navy blue circles, one orbiting the other, representing the globe and the motion of the moon and as an expression of the new corporate slogan “Time, the eternal theme, is our origin’.
This new logo served to ‘concentrate’ the company’s basic missions: ‘to measure the time’, ‘to create the time’ and ‘to use the time’. The bold simplicity of the logo, which characterised much of Yoshimura’s logos, was a highly practical solution given a philosophical meaning. Its functionally would be proven as it was consistently and effectively applied to large format signage and vehicle liveries down to corporate stationery.
A Q&A handbook was also produced to introduce the CI to employees. This would keep the corporation’s ‘principles and policies’ from becoming ‘abstract and obscure’.
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