Fix the Logo: the interview
Friday, August 11, 2006

Posted by Kerrzy

A few days after writing "Say NO to the Slug!", I spoke with Drew Celestino, the originator of Fixthelogo.com, about the Slug, the reaction of the hockey world to his website and sports in the city of Buffalo...here's the interview in it's entirety:

JK: Tell me about your website, fixthelogo.com; What’s it all about -- How did it get started?

DC: Well the website is quite simply a protest of the Buffalo Sabres new logo for the next season. Basically the logo was leaked out onto the Internet mid-July and fans got a glimpse of it, and immediately were pretty much appalled.

I kind of took a little casual poll of my friends and checked out some Sabres forums and whatnot and the reaction was just so overwhelmingly negative that I just decided to, you know, put my name on something to say I don’t approve of this, neither does anyone else that signs this petition. READ MORE...

JK: As of about 9:30 last night the count was 28,441 signatures. That’s a huge number…WHAT was your original goal -- HOW MANY signatures did you expect to rack up going into this thing?

DC: I never expected – I though it would take me MONTHS to get a thousand; I just never expected it to be this huge.

Soon enough though, the local radio station around here put me on the air for a few minutes to talk about it and after that, things just really snowballed into media appearances and it really got everyone's attention.

Everyone that saw the logo basically had the same reaction and signed the petition, told their friends and the next thing you know the petition is circulating around offices, mailing lists and address books. It’s been pretty crazy.

JK: How many do you think you’ll need to make the organization budge – or do you think there is any number that will?

DC: I don’t know how many it’s going to take to get the logo completely removed and forgotten. They’ve admitted that they were aware of the website, aware of the petition and aware of the outcry, and I think that’s part of the reason the team decided to go 15 games this season with their original 1970 jerseys this season.

I’m not saying we caused that whole effort to happen, but I think originally they were only going to do 10 or 12 games with those jerseys, now they’re doing 15, so we had some impact, but I don’t think we have quite enough yet.

But now that the logo is official, as I said on the website, the campaign now goes indefinitely until we have enough support to get rid of this thing for good.

JK: In your letter to Sabres owner Tom Golisano you wrote:

“The logo resembles neither a buffalo nor a sabre. It has been compared to numerous unflattering things, from a hairpiece to a slug. This logo is an embarrassment to the Buffalo Sabres as well as the fans that support them.”

From the perspective of a Sabres fan, what is about the logo that is most upsetting: is it that they seem to have totally overlooked what the fans want?

DC: It’s actually a number of things. Number one, it’s the fact that the team promised to go back – I mean, they took 10 years of fans pleading with ownership, and now pleading with Tom Golisano the pseudo-new owner when he took over the team a few seasons ago – we wanted the old colours back, we wanted the blue and gold back. As any Sabres fan will tell you, saying that you want the blue and gold back is synonymous with “we want the original logo back,” or the original jerseys back in some form. Well, he seems to have missed the message and they have given us the blue and gold back, but with that they’re giving us this new fangled design that is not our original logo and fans really wanted that design back because it was timeless and classic and really encompassed – well, it’s a buffalo and crossed sabres – so it really said it all. But on top of that, the new design is just so wretched and ugly that, I mean, it really just had this stinging effect that was just totally polarizing. It just incited instant outrage in questioning what it’s supposed to be and when you analyze it further, it just wreaks of corporate design firm, you know, slick, ‘modern’, New England Patriots, St. Louis Rams…it just wreaks of that kind of ‘art-deco’ thing that seems to be in for a lot of sports franchises these days. It doesn’t speak to the Buffalo Sabres fan-base who have stood by this team for so long, it doesn’t honor tradition and it just stinks, all in all. JK: We’ve touched on the fact that it’s been featured in various media, we’ve talked about the number of signatures, but what has surprised you the most about the reign of fixthelogo.com?

DC: The speed at which the word traveled about the site and about the protest and just the overall of outpouring of support from the fans, I mean, it’s just been unbelievable. It’s just been incredible to hear people talking about hockey in July, that’s incredible enough especially in Buffalo where the Buffalo Bills football club is in training camp and that’s usually the only focus of
Buffalo sports at this time of the year.

But now after such a great Sabres season this has really got people fired up about the Buffalo Sabres, so the fan support has been unbelievable and everyone feels like they have a stake in the team and they feel like this is the team telling them “no you don’t” in a way. Fans don’t want to be dictated and told what they like – fans will tell the ownership what they like. It’s just been great to see fans speak out and say “we don’t approve of this” and we’re going to let you know about it.

JK: How about the support from non-Buffalo Sabres fans?

DC: That’s actually another thing. I cannot believe the way it’s kind of become almost league-wide thing. I mean, I’ve gotten emails from Toronto, Montreal, Edmonton, Boston, New York Rangers fans…fans from all these different cities are writing in, signing the petition and saying “we understand and we back you up, that thing’s really ugly and as a fan of hockey we hate it too” and it’s just pretty incredible to see fans of the game in general really sticking to their guns and saying that they don’t care for this either.

JK: Have you had any contact with the Buffalo organization at all?

DC: Sadly, no. I’ve sent them periodic updates and requests to speak with somebody about the website and just about the effort, no one has gotten back to be. I know the team is aware of the website and I’m a very easy guy to find, very easy to track down, so if they would like to speak to me I would be more than happy to speak to them.

I’m sure that they will NEVER contact me, but just to know that they know about the effort against the logo; well, I guess that’s something.

We’ve been told that we haven’t seen the whole package yet and that we should wait to see the full uniform…I find that argument really weak because the logo is the logo and considering it’s going to be featured on hats, t-shirts and everything you can think of, if it looks bad it looks bad...

JK: Thanks for your time Drew, good luck "squishing the slug"!

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Jim Kerr