As I understand it, the challenge of the assignment is to analyse
the available character shapes and extrapolate them to other
characters in order to achieve a complete alphabet. If we were to
point you to a similar typeface, wouldn’t that be considered…
cheating? If I were you, I’d start by sketching the other characters
and post them in the Critique section instead of going at it the
other way around.

It’s a little-known fact that in the arctic and antarctic latitudes in their respective summers, the Milky Way Midnight bar is actually made with white chocolate, owing to the midnight sun. Also, the nougat swirls to the left in the southern hemisphere, whereas it swirls to the right in the northern, but that’s a different force of nature altogether.

hahahhahahahahaha „„ Really?

Fortunately, no. White chocolate is an aberration against all that is good and right with the world. Seriously, I would hate to find myself at a convenience store at the north pole in July and have my options so severely limited.

You knew I was kidding. Just checking. (hehehehe)

Milky way in a typophile discussion? That hasn’t happened before.

well, the cool, edgy, Milky Way MIDNIGHT

Maybe they were afraid of racist connotations with “dark”? Anyway, why not Milky Way in these discussions? Much more interesting than the endless Prada, car logos and soccer jerseys.

So since the new Milky Way logo is so weak, I decided to do a redesign. After much deliberation, I decided the best thing to add edge and coolness to the brand would be Bold Comic Sans MS, stretched to 140% and run through the “Drop Shadow” and “Inner Shadow” Photoshop filters.



[evil grin]

Dude, you could drive a truck between the W and the a.

I’m a traditionalist, I think they should have left well enough alone…

Patricia, I don’t mess with kerning. That’s for amateurs.

(In all seriousness though, I totally agree about some of these redesigns, like Wrigley’s and especially the US money. uch. At least Dunkin’ Donuts was brave enough not to ditch Frankfurter during their redesign — I totally dig their logo.)

I guess it wouldn’t necessarily be considered cheating since I was supplied with a font (Diamanti Condensed) by the art director to use as a basis/inspiration. I believe the logo was designed 40+ years ago and appears to be a custom design, otherwise, I think a font would have been used or supplied by the company with no need for a newly created font. But, as per your suggestion, I’ve already been sketching in pencil and in Illustrator possible ideas for characters and I’ll probably post the results in the Critique section for feedback.

It’s been fun with all this kidding around, but the one thing they try to keep is enough continuity to maintain brand recognition. Patricia’s link early in this thread showed that. The green lettering has been around a long time, even if the shape of the letters has changed. So has the use of chocolate and nougat (sortof) colors, behind those letters. You see those things and you don’t really need to see the lettering. You already know it’s Milky Way. That kind of recognition is priceless in a competitive market.

OK, now I have to go back and think about what Chesh said about the Midnight Sun and the Coriolis effect. Huh? ;-)

As someone much older than 40, I can say that I don’t think that Milky Way logo is that old. My recollection is that they used to have a script not that many years ago. It was the same color, but it wasn’t that lettering (I think).

The current lettering is almost surely a custom design, but I agree with Yves. If your instructor gave you something to use, then that should be all the ‘help’ you’ll need.

James, you’re trying to learn design, not copying, right? And it doesn’t matter if you disapprove of the letterforms, since your assignment is to design something based on it. Think of it as a client who loves this lettering and wants to expand the hand-drawn logo into a typeface for other ad copy, not someone asking you to design something you like.

Definitely not the original logo… but how recent I don’t know. I seem to remember more of a script as well (and I am 40).

Well, here you have it. Not that this has anything to do with the original query.

This logo dates from 1999 and joins the long long list of watered-down redesigns we’ve been besieged with recently including Wrigleys gum, UPS, Cynar liqueur and the American currency system. Don’t get me started.

Yeah, I remember the old script logo and I’m not even 25… I read that site you linked to, Patricia, and came across something curious:

“MILKY WAY

Um, that it’s dark at midnight?

Perhaps they thought the word “midnight” seemed edgier and even darker, than simply “dark”.

I guess so. Nevermind. =)

some people shop based on “coolness factor” not just because they are craving a dark chocolate candybar