Metro is the name of a public transport newspaper from the United States, which was first released in 1904 under the name Electric Traction Weekly. The name of the free-of-charge tabloid had changed several times throughout the years, turning into Metro only by the middle of the 1970s. The editorial is all about short news and commercials.
This free public transportation editorial has come through different stages during its long and intense history. In the very beginning, it was an Electric Traction Weekly, available in trains, then the newspaper turned into Bus Journal, keeping the trains as the main distribution channel, but adding busses to it. In a couple of years, the name of the magazine was changed to Mass Transportation, which was supposed to unite all transports under one “roof”.
The metropolitan direction was given to the newspaper in the early 1960s, and the current name was established in 1975. And this is when the simple yet very modern and professional emblem was created for the editorial. Today it is a full-fledged franchise, which includes not only a newspaper, but also a TV channel and a magazine, and all these subdivisions use the same emblem.
The Metro newspaper logo features a simple composition of lowercase lettering and a delicate and strict graphical element replacing one of the letters. It is a modest traditional sans-serif inscription with the last letter, “O”, stylized as a globe, drawn in flat 2D contours. The globe can be substituted by other symbols, depending on the need of the newspaper.
The first Metro badge, set in a calm and dark shade of green, featured a narrowed lowercase inscription in a fancy Sans-serif font, with an interesting diagonal cut-out in the upper part of the letter “E”, and the “O” replaced by the flat schematic globe, drawn in medium-weight green lines.
After the redesign, the color palette of the Metro visual identity got one shade lighter, and the composition was slightly changed; with the globe now placed on the left from the title case “Metro World News” lettering, set in a traditional full-shaped sans-serif font, with the characters written in light-weight lines.
The lowercase Metro logotype might seem very simple at the first glance, executed in a slightly narrowed sans-serif typeface with the shortened lines of the horizontal bars of the letters. The overall style of the typeface looks pretty similar to such fonts as Audace Std Regular and Romántica Medium, but with the contours refined. The main design element of the typeface (apart from the replaced letter “O”), is the lowercase “E”, which has its corner of the horizontal bar diagonally cut.
As for the color palette, the Metro franchise uses two variants — a traditional black and white scheme, or a combination of calm dark green and white. The first option is just a timeless choice, which will always be actual for any placement. As for the green shade on the logo, it looks very relaxing confident. Both color versions can be used in reverse too.