Expo 2010: Najbrt Logo, the authors of the pavilion and the exhibition will be sought

Prague - The Czech Republic now has an official logo for the World Expo 2010 in China. Its design, which, in addition to the national colors, in line with the theme of the entire event, refers to urban life, was presented to journalists today by the general commissioner of the Czech participation Pavel Stehlík and the authors of the design. The logo was created in the studio of Aleš Najbrt, one of the most well-known Czech graphic designers.
The organizers are also currently preparing a tender for the design of the pavilion and the exhibition itself. The pavilion is intended to promote the country primarily in economic and cultural terms, fulfilling the Czech slogan "Fruits of Civilization".
The Czech logo features the word Expo and the year 2010, when the exhibition will take place, rendered in large letters. According to Stehlík, the logo should dominate not only the website but also other promotional materials. "We tried to create a logo that is very simple," Najbrt told journalists.
The creators of the design borrowed blue and red from the Czech flag and complemented them with a lighter shade of blue and green, which symbolizes urban greenery. The letters are also deliberately close together to refer to urbanism, according to the creators. "There are several meanings in the logo. We show the city in different forms," Najbrt added.
Stehlík believes that Expo is an "amazing" opportunity to present the Czech Republic. "It’s always a huge competition with the others, and we can only have that at the Expo itself," he stated. The Czech Republic aims to present itself in China as a modern, advanced, and prosperous country. According to Stehlík, those interested in creating the pavilion will have ample space for their own imagination. "We don’t want to guide the creators. We have given them as wide a space as possible. We hope they will come up with something creative and innovative," Stehlík said.
However, according to him, the Czech Republic has already achieved one success. In one part of the area, a presentation of some of the best contemporary urban solutions will be showcased. In the category titled Livable City, the Prague flood protection system with mobile barriers was awarded points, he stated. Prague made it among the winners in a competition of 113 proposals from 86 cities worldwide.
The government recently allocated about half a billion crowns for the presentation of the republic in China. For the last exhibition, held in 2005 in Japan, the state paid about 300 million crowns. The budget for the Czech participation in Shanghai will be higher, among other reasons, due to having a pavilion twice the size of what the Czech Republic had in the Aichi Prefecture of Japan. While in the land of the rising sun, Czechs utilized about 900 square meters, in the most populous country on the planet, the pavilion will cover an area of 2000 square meters.
The first exhibition that can be considered a predecessor to international Expo exhibitions took place in May 1851 in London. Since then, exhibitions have always been a major event, and many groundbreaking inventions and structures have appeared there.
The Czech Republic has noted a spectacular success in the history of Expo exhibitions, particularly in 1958 in Brussels, when the Czechoslovak exhibition unexpectedly received the highest award in the overall evaluation, the Golden Star, along with dozens of other accolades.