The ligand of N-(2-hydroxybenzylideneamino)-l,8-naphthalimide (HL) and its metal complexes of CuL2 (1) and CoL2 (2) have been synthesized. Elernental analysis, IR and X-ray single-crystal diffraction characterizations for 1 and 2 have been carried out. In the complexes of 1and 2, the central metallic ions of Cu2+ and Co2+ coordinate with two deprotonated ligands of L-,respectively and adopt distorted square planar geometries. The thermal analysis result shows that the two complexes undergo two similar decomposition processes because of their similar geometric configurations. For the two complexes, fluorescence spectra measurements indicate that complex CoL2 emits stronger blue fluorescence than HL and the complex CuL2 does not emit fluorescence at all.