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The 1967 world fair in Montreal, Canada was held together by one unifying object–the Expo 67 logo. Quite possibly it is one of the most cleanly executed and memorable World Fair logo’s to date. The combination of the timeless icon combined with beautifully kerned type (set in the Optima Roman typeface), really unified the core ideas behind Expo 67.
The theme of this World Fair was ‘Man and his World’. Every pavilion in one way or another, represents this theme of man to the world around him. The designer responsible for this logo was Julien Hébert, a Canadian industrial designer. At the soul of this logo is Hébert’s conceptual use of an ancient sign representing man–vertical line with arms outstretched to either side–close in proximity to represent friendship. The symbol representing man is repeated in a circle, extending the conceptual representation of unity of mankind around the world.
The following logo’s are a few from past World Fair’s with the exception of the Shanghai 2010 logo. You can see that the Expo 67 logo stands out a whole lot more than the others. Aside from incorporating the Chinese symbol for world into it, the Shanghai 2010 logo is in my opinion quite weak. What do you think?
Habitat 158 Housing
When looking at the pavilions it is clearly visible of how each intertwines the theme ‘Man and his World’. The perfect example is the Habitat 158 living units. If you’re interested in seeing floor plans or a whole series of images, look here. Each is built in such close quarters; it’s all about being a village. I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t take living in such a small place.
Polymer Pavilion
Air Canada Pavilion
La Ronde Pavilion
United States Pavilion
I agree, the shanghai logo is pretty week…creative but very week. With the ability to create today with all of the technology and knowledge out there, you’d think they would have made a logo that would be seen as an icon, used as a statement. Although it is much better than their mascot of the expo. http://en.expo2010.cn/sr/ms/indexn.htm
I guess cartoon characters represent world peace?
By looking at this it seems as if their approach was to target a different audience than the other World Fair’s did. The Expo 67 logo was elegant yet the Shanghai 2010 logo is quite playful and as you pointed out, the mascot (horrid) is even more playful + cartoony.
Maybe their reasoning was that it’s this younger generation that will be creating and changing the world. On top of all that though, the Shanghai logo lacks in every which-way possible.
expo67 is def the best….expo86 is not workin for them how they tried to kern the type good blog, keep it up!
This is fantastic information. I’m working on a project about branding and visual identity at international expositions from 1958 to 2015 in addition to running ExpoMuseum.com and The World’s Fair Podcast.
Expo ‘67 is one of my favorite logos, as well…. as was Expo ’74’s mobius strip. Expo 2000’s was quite innovative in that it changed shape and color depending on context.
Oh.. and you might enjoy this look at expo mascots:
http://expomuseum.com/mascot/
Voting has ended since I created this… and Expo 2012 has since changed their mascots.
wow, that 67 logo is pretty nice – i had never seen it before.
great post.
[...] the ‘67 World’s fair in Montreal. With some of these postcards I just really enjoy the logo and style of the photograph the [...]
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