Nah, it’s custom. I agree about the R but the low, almost delicate, bar on the A, is distinctive too.

Very nice....

It’s kind of frightening when you look at it low res, though. The line weight seemed visually unbalanced, while in construction it may be truly monoline; you know, like the infamous Century Gothic.

Wow, I don’t like it at all. Something looks off in the widths, the weights.

Keep in mind I snapped this from a Flash file. The original shows none of the inconsistencies you see here. Next time you’re at Target, pick up a weighty ice cream scoop (a joy in itself) and look at the label to see what I mean.

I agree with Patty. Compared to Neutraface, this is messed up. Look at how in Neutraface the R and A go together. Here the look like they’re from different fonts.

edit: Ok Stephen, I’ll suspend judgment until I get to Target!

Yeah, the ones that are in the store is good. I think that the font’s G is pretty individual. Look at the angle in which the loop closes in.

Ah, the weighty ice cream scoop...

To me, the S looks very much like the one in Futura. I wouldn’t be surprised if that font was the starting point.

There aren’t any Targets where I live...

all the other graphics on the flash site are Futura so I think Mark’s right.

http://target.com/michaelgraves/index.jhtml

dopey flash intro.

Agree about the widths, first glance looks very wacky.

—————
Paul Ducco
Identity Design, Melbourne

Some of the characters remind me of Mark’s typeface Mostra, but this just isn’t quite right.

- Lex

Check out the people who implemented the design according to Graves’ web site: http://www.designguys.com/

I posted a higher-res (80k) version at my buzznet account.

http://cdn-77.cdn.buzznet.com/assets/users12/ravenmn/default/Michael_Gra...

I’ll see if I can track down the person locally who designed it. The version we have at Target is from 2003, so It’s been a few years.

Better in the higher res version but I still don’t think it works. Feels forced, like much of his design.

Some of the characters remind me of Mark’s typeface Mostra, but this just isn’t quite right.

I was thinking the same thing...

Mostra has a similar look, but the proportions are different in some of the letters (M and N, especially), completely different S (all three of them), and Mostra is more strictly geometric (by design).

The A and V look so narrow compared to the E, G and N. This makes no sense for either kind of proportion system. I can’t imagine Flash screwing it up so selectively.

ChrisL

Chris - I was referring to the stroke width issues, not so much the character widths, which are indeed unconventional, though they work for me.

Steuf—I supose that is why the horizontal strokes look so heavy? I guess Flash (like film) is best kept moving so that its flaws are less evident. As for the proportions, either Futura, Proxima Nova, or Gill Sans proportions (width of glyphs) seem far superior to what I can see of this example. The original, in all its hi-rez glory, may be better but that I can’t tell from this sample.

ChrisL

Chris you are correct, Flash is meant for an interactive/animation environment. I’m pretty sure that the way Flash renders out type changes the actual bezier structure by ’simplifying’ it, thus changing the actual structure of the glyphs creating the idiosyncrasies that we are seeing in the stroke modulation.

It’s unfortunate the whoever did design this didn’t pay closer attention to the letter pairing of HA as it looks like a visual hiccup.

And when you look at his minisite under Target, the top of the G looks dead-flat.

Eew.

That’s where this sample comes from, only larger via Flash’s zoom command.

I zoomed in, Mr. Cole. And I found more and more idiosyncrasies.

Looks like Flash’s typical curve simplification to me.

yeah, I wouldn’t trust Flash for maintaining curve integrity

—————
Paul Ducco
Identity/Logo Design, Melbourne

So Flash was indeed the culprit, then? Thank God.

I always thought that the program would simply embed a typeface, or at least maintain its outline faithfully, like a PDF or vector path.

Back to the less technical aspects of the font, I agree with Mark’s first comment. To my non-designer’s eye, this looks like an adaptation of Futura. Use the G to make the C; make a new flat-sided M with a high crotch, bring in the legs on the A and V, maybe do a little ’squooshing’, and most of us couldn’t tell the difference without side-by-side nit-picking.

- Mike Yanega

The design guys website has a feauture on the Micheal Gaves Design project, under casestudies, including a photo of this famous ice cream scoop we’ve been hearing so much about

Link, Alex?

http://www.designguys.com/

Same link as above Stephen, the case studies are accessed through the scarlet rectangle on the far right and then selecting Michael Graves. Flash grrr.
Tim

Thank you! Yeah, that lame site is not worthy of their work.

The mystery solved!

Quoting the latest FontShop newsletter:
“For the logo, Minneapolis studio Designguys® modified the classic Futura™ just enough to make it look like something entirely new.”

So it was Futura all along. Looks like we don’t have to look very far for the solution.

Typophile was the solution! Here’s a link: Packaging Fonts