Expos logo discussed on sitcom in 1988

[JayMac]

Can you imagine wearing some article of Whalers clothing to Walgreens and being asked about some sort of Andrew Cassels minutia by a displaced New Englander? I think I'd probably mumble "Ijustlikethelogo" and dive into the nearest bin of generic 99-cent rubber "sports balls."

I'd imagine it would be Pat Verbeek or Ron Francis minutiae while picking up my vitamins or reading a GQ magazine.

[Gothamite]

That's pretty much the reason behind My Personal Merch Rule #3 -"Never wear anything from a team you're not a fan of."

If I was going to break that, it'd probably be for the Whalers. Love that color scheme, love that logo. The real one anyway, not the bastardized late-model with the silver and the pointless outlines.

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

That's pretty much the reason behind My Personal Merch Rule #3 -"Never wear anything from a team you're not a fan of."

I try to follow that rule. But I had to break it when the Rochester Red Wings game out with a cap that has an "FC" logo, for "Flower City", in the style of the Twins' "TC" logo.

Since these are my initials (Ferdinand Cesarano), I had to jump on that hat.

Indeed, I feel like I have more reason to wear this "FC" monogram than the Rochester team has, since those initials do not represent that team's name. (The same reason that I vehemently dislike the Twins' "TC" hat.)

[TheOldRoman]

You have to ask your girlfriend to buy esoteric sports apparel? w-pshh, w-pshh

Yep. He should do like me. Buy new hats, sneak them into his closet, then casually wear them a few weeks later. When the wife asks, claim that I've had it for years and can't believe she hasn't noticed it before.

She actually busted me this year though. "No, that's new. Your other '59 Sox hat was from a different company and didn't have a high crown." I love this woman.

[chcarlson23]

That's pretty much the reason behind My Personal Merch Rule #3 -"Never wear anything from a team you're not a fan of."

If I was going to break that, it'd probably be for the Whalers. Love that color scheme, love that logo. The real one anyway, not the bastardized late-model with the silver and the pointless outlines.

I thought that the Whalers would look sharp on a blue jersey, but the only time they did, it was with a ridiculous amount of silver.

[The_Admiral]

The original non-toilet-seat logo was superior, but so was the color scheme that went along with the toilet seat. Had they decided to share an arena with UConn instead of sharing one with NC State, maybe they would have come to this conclusion.

[sc49erfan15]

You have to ask your girlfriend to buy esoteric sports apparel? w-pshh, w-pshh

Yep. He should do like me. Buy new hats, sneak them into his closet, then casually wear them a few weeks later. When the wife asks, claim that I've had it for years and can't believe she hasn't noticed it before.

She actually busted me this year though. "No, that's new. Your other '59 Sox hat was from a different company and didn't have a high crown." I love this woman.

Ha. I had to do that when I worked at Lids and would plunder our website for sales during downtime. There was a lot of downtime in the winter at an outdoor outlet mall in New Jersey.

I generally don't have to sneak anything, though. She's cool.

[TheOldRoman]

Oh, I don't *have* to sneak anything, either. She normally just rolls her eyes at me and asks "Did you really need another hat?" But yes, a few times over the last year I went on Lids.com when they had a sale on clearance stuff and picked up a few ugly hats just because. "Yes, I needed this gray and black camouflage Sox hat because I'll wear it while I mow the lawn and it was only $6 so why not?"

[MCM0313]

That's pretty much the reason behind My Personal Merch Rule #3 -"Never wear anything from a team you're not a fan of."

If I was going to break that, it'd probably be for the Whalers. Love that color scheme, love that logo. The real one anyway, not the bastardized late-model with the silver and the pointless outlines.

I thought that the Whalers would look sharp on a blue jersey, but the only time they did, it was with a ridiculous amount of silver.

You know what I don't get? Why do teams with blue-and-green color schemes so overwhelmingly choose blue as the "main" color to wear? Think about it...Seahawks, Canucks, late-period Whalers, Florida Gulf Coast, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, 1990s Mavericks...the only real exceptions are early Whalers and early Mavericks, and they both moved to blue. I think it makes the look more distinctive if they go with green, especially if it's kelly green. Sorry if this little rant is off-topic.

[Gothamite]

More distinctive? Sure. But blue is a more marketable and merchandisable color.

[MCM0313]

More distinctive? Sure. But blue is a more marketable and merchandisable color.

I get that. Especially navy blue, which is bland and inoffensive and almost neutral in terms of what it can be worn with. It's like black almost. But navy and black are both so bland.

My three least-favorite color trends of the past 15 or 20 years: black, dark navy blue, dull, barely-metallic "Vegas gold."

[B-Rich]

Back on topic: The Expos brand, in my opinion is one of the worst ever in sports.

And one of the parts that people don't discuss, which I'll go into graphically below, is that it is terribly rendered from a technical sense, and graphically incorrect in what it is trying to supposedly convey (according to the official description).

Briefly, though, a few thoughts before I go into that.

1. Naming a team for a world's fair that occurred 2 years before the team first played is a goofy idea. I know the World's Fair was a great success and was a point of pride for those of Montreal, but seriously? Expos? Not to be outdone, Montreal did the same type of thing again a few years later, naming their first NASL team the Olympiques, one year after the city was awarded that event.

2. The concept of the logo, as one can see from the discussion on the board, the Newhart clip, and other references, is shoddy. Is it an "M" or not? There is clearly a lower case "e" in red, but is the right half of the logo a lowercase "b"? And what about the white section? Is it an "I", a "J", or something else, or negative space? Plus the whole original team name "expos" being done in lower case looks dumb. I am aware that use of all lowercase may have been a "thing" in the late 60s, but it still looked stupid.

3. Now on to the design itself. As per the earlier discussion, there is a general consensus backed up by the official description that the logo in its entirety represents a capital "M", with big rounded serifs on both bottom ends. However, it is not just any "M". but what I would call a "closed" M. For comparison's sake, let's look at an open "E" and a closed "E":

Both adequately convey the letter "E", but the one on the right is "closed" with only lines and no space differentiating the arms of the capital "E".

Let's start by disregarding the 3 colors and the "e" and "b", and begin with a look at the outline of the "M", provided by Cesarano:

Now, to turn this into an "M", you would need to add three lines; one from the top down and two from the bottom up. The indentations in between the rounded curves indicate where these lines would go (see 1st picture below). But if you add the lines, keeping them parallel with the existing parallel outside lines of the "M" (and overall italicization of the logo), look at what you come up with (2nd pic below):

It's unbalanced and irregular. It doesn't work. We can try a different track, and point the interior lines to the midpoint of each opposite curve (see 1st pic below). It looks a little better, but is still something that is imbalanced and irregular. The fact that all vertical lines are not parallel works against the eyes. It may be better if the lines separating the "legs" of the M diminished to a vanishing point, rather than the straight edge ends that I used here, but I don't think so:

That being said, could the original Montreal Expos "M" logo (1st pic below) be tweaked and fixed? I took a shot at it, based upon maintaining the parallel lines concept and the closed "M". I also added a "hole" to better advertise the "b". I tried several iterations to mirror the curlicue of the "e" to make the loop of the "b", but none of them worked. I think the capital "M" is a little more noticeable-- the curl of the "e" indicates the break in between two legs, and the white/blue centered break does the same-- but that's about the only improvement.

[bleuet]

My take

Yes the name "Expos" was well, so so.

But you have to keep in mind they needed a bilingual name, majority of Montrealers beeing french. There was very little options down there.

The logo

red white and blue, because those were colors of the NHL dominating Canadiens, came immediately into mind.

The logo design: at same time far from perfect, BUT perfectly in mood with the era of symbolic logos. Its a big M with a small e and a b at the end. Montreal Expos baseball.

Doesnt represent "something" like the Phillies P, the C Cubs, to an extent, the B Bruins etc.

Unfair to state in 2015 this is the worst logo in sports. It was "in the mood".

And in the end, its "strangeness" (which I agree, its a strange graphic logo) now make its renommée: we're still talking about it 45 years later. It WORKED.

[Gothamite]

You don't think failures are talked about for decades afterwards?

This is the Internet - Fails have a much longer shelf life than successes.

[SCalderwood]

All of you who are complaining about the outline of the Expos logo not looking like an M (which is debatable in and of itself) are missing one important thing... the outline is not the only thing that defines a logo, in fact the outline is the probably the LEAST important part of what defines a logo. The outline of the Oriole bird cap logo does NOT look like an Oriole. You would not be able to look at the outline of that logo and know it is an oriole head. But that does not make it a bad logo.

Literally, it's what's on the inside that counts.

Where I am going with this is that the swirl that forms the e helps make the overall logo look more like an an M. It's silly to even consider ONLY what the outline of the logo looks like because that's not a logo (meaning, purely the outline) they used. That's not how they ever really "advertised" their logo. Whoever designed that logo knew that the e-swirl helped the overall logo look more like an M.

[ConcreteCharlie]

Ive never seen it as anything other than an M

[Gothamite]

If you discount the outline, it looks even less like an M.

[MCM0313]

Looking at it in hindsight, it wasn't the best logo. I absolutely love their '80s uniforms, though.

[bleuet]

You don't think failures are talked about for decades afterwards?

This is the Internet - Fails have a much longer shelf life than successes.

Was'nt a failure in 1969, thats my point.

Its not perfect, its not a failure IMHO.

The current Jacksonville Jaguars helmets would be a terrible failure in 1969, and even today..

[mjd77]

Does anyone think a new Montreal team would be named Expos again, or would they come up with something new?