DuckDuckGo

angea’s designer Christoph Koeberlin and publisher Ivo Gabrowitsch were thrilled, as both have appreciated DuckDuckGo’s USP for years. Unlike more well-known search engines, it does not collect personal information about its users and displays the same results for everyone.

Initially, the original Pangea was displayed to a small portion of DuckDuckGo users to see whether it would influence or impact their behavior. After just 24 hours, the test was deemed a success. From then on, the typeface could be selected in the settings as an alternative to the previous default font, Proxima Nova.

At the same time, work began on the desired modifications. Fontwerk worked closely with DuckDuckGo’s Brand Team to turn Pangea into the semi-custom font ‘Duck Sans’. To avoid too great a change in users’ viewing and reading habits, the font size had to be adjusted to match the previous one. This meant reducing the size of all glyphs by around 3% and adjusting the vertical metrics and positioning of accents accordingly.

Adjustments were also made to other characters, such as the ‘G’ (more distinct), the ‘&’ (closed), and the dots on the i (heavier), as well as newly drawn numerals that were to become more ‘grotesque’. In addition, the stylistic alternative of the lowercase ‘l’ (without a foot) was to become the standard in the text version. The three weights Regular, Medium, and Bold were made slightly thinner and the character spacing of the display variant was to be reduced slightly. These requirements arose after internal tests with the variable fonts.

These stylistic changes were implemented following a few feedback rounds, with some of them finding their way into stylistic alternates (accessible via OpenType). Over the course of the collaboration, further requests for customization arose. For example, the stylistic sets now include an additional alternative ‘M’ and a third ‘Duck Ampersand’ for eye-catching purposes; the special ‘G’ and a matching ‘k’ are automatically used in the context of the brand name ‘DuckDuckGo’. In a short space of time, Pangea became ‘Duck Sans Display’ for headlines and Pangea Text became ‘Duck Sans Product’ for most applications.

Another challenge was to reduce file sizes as much as possible. A little bit of context: with 100 million search queries per day, every kilobyte of data adds up to several gigabytes, which has an impact on loading speed and carbon footprint. In order to achieve the greatest possible impact here, the fonts were divided into different language areas. Three main subsets were constructed: ‘Basic Latin’ for the most widely spoken Latin languages worldwide, ‘Complete Latin’ for all other Latin languages (a special feature of Pangea: it masters all languages of the Latin alphabet!), and Cyrillic/Greek.

In addition, characters that are relevant for all language areas – such as currency symbols, fractions, and symbols – were packed into a separate file (‘Supplement’). This allows loading times to be efficiently controlled via CSS font stack depending on the user’s browser language.

Last but not least, manual hinting (a type of screen optimization, especially for older Windows systems) paid off here. Not only does it achieve better results than the usual auto-hinting, but is also more economical in terms of file size. For example: The DuckSansDisplayBasic-Regular.woff2 file can be reduced by up to 90% with all of these measures (non-subset version of the regular retail Pangea 136kB vs. basic version of Duck Sans 15kB). Compared to the previous corporate font, the file size savings are even more significant.

‘Duck Sans’ is an excellent example of how a corporate typeface can be efficiently created. We call the process of adapting an existing retail font to individual requirements ‘Semi-Custom Fonts’. And we often recommend them as a more suitable, time- and cost-efficient alternative to clients who are looking for a Custom Font.

The concrete advantages are impressive, the most important being that licenses for semi-custom fonts are significantly lower in price than custom fonts in the vast majority of cases.

You can also choose from a huge selection of well-developed and extensively tested fonts that customers can test for their own first impression in their product or branding.

Modifications of any kind can be made to suit individual needs and, depending on the scope, are often available within a few days or weeks. In combination with fair and far-reaching license agreements, semi-custom fonts can therefore become exclusive fonts in their own right.

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