[Video] Meet Shopee Font: A Fresh New Type that Takes Us around SEA and Beyond

At Shopee, we believe in the power of promoting brand recall through a distinct identity. Often, boosting brand awareness has little to do with what you preach but how your users perceive you. This perception is a result of everything from telling a compelling brand story to having unique visual touchpoints with which users interact.

As a multinational e-commerce company, Shopee’s business entails taking experiences from online to offline and vice versa, touching many lives along the way. To the Design team, this means creating gripping visuals is of utmost importance as interaction with our brand passes from one hand onto the next.

Every aspect of our design undergoes a series of careful considerations, from colours to images to typography; the devil is in the details. We saw this as a clear opportunity to create an exclusive typeface for Shopee, one that portrays our brand personality: Simple, Happy, Together.

In a recent conversation with the project lead, Yado Hu, he shared with us about how it all started and how Shopee Font checks all our boxes.

Q: Why was it necessary for Shopee to create a brand new typeface?

A: Our work is mostly visual-heavy. Despite the vast array of typefaces available in the market, finding one that meets all our business needs is arduous. A large number of our users are located in Southeast Asia, a region that boasts cultural and ethnic diversity. This means we need a typeface that is inclusive enough to cover all special characters in foreign languages like Thai and Vietnamese, as well as international currency symbols.

To meet this need, we chose to work with Roboto. But there was another problem. Roboto was not a typeface suitable for marketing artwork; it was designed to provide a comfortable reading experience for long paragraphs of texts. Moreover, it does not tell our brand story the way we’d like it.

At first, we tried exploring other typefaces in the market. We wanted something simple, but with enough weight and a powerful visual impact, all while retaining the characteristics of geometric figures. The requirement was quite straightforward. But interestingly, font designers don’t usually produce geometric fonts. To them, if the fonts are not optimised for glyphs, it is an unfinished product and is not worth selling.

However, such style was precisely what we wanted. Since most of our design projects involve creating Shopee’s marketing posters, each letter should be apparent and preserves the organic qualities of geometric shapes. Therefore, we gave lesser priority to font readability. In short, think of it this way; it is better to do it yourself.

Q: How was the typeface created?

A: The typeface is derived from our iconic Shopee logo. We took the carefully crafted letters in the logo and studied their anatomy and characteristics — every letter-spacing, every stroke, cap-height, X-height, font-weight, etc. We then applied these principles to other Latin characters, numbers, and symbols, and developed a full-fledged font with various families.

Q: What was your process in developing this typeface?

A: We analysed the various logos and labels created for Shopee in the past to understand the overall aesthetic trends. Doing so helped us distinguish the kind of fonts that was well-received by our audience, which gave us a clear goal to work towards.

Then, we studied the histories and development of typography and its relationship with language and writing. We also researched what the Latin alphabet is and what are the writing symbols. There was also a study on the Unicode international encoding system to help us understand the most professional way to manage characters worldwide. This process was crucial as it helped us decide whether pushing forward with the project was feasible or if the workload was reasonable, based on the total number of characters to design.

After the research on characters, we explored and assessed the different tools and software available for type creation, to find the one that best suits our needs. We struggled a bit here, as typography design is a niche field. There aren’t many designers who specialise in it. Therefore, it was difficult for us to unmask the mystery behind different softwares to determine which one was the best tool.

Q: What were some of the biggest challenges the team encountered during this project?

A: As with any other design projects, a couple of hurdles are inevitable. One of the major ones was finding the right software and learning how to use it. Shopee Font was our first typeface creation project. Naturally, we did not have a clear SOP or past projects as sources of reference. As a result, it brought about another set of problem: adjusting font-weight, kerning, and spacing.

Since there were no SOPs on creating type, we did not know what the right sequence was and which aspect to fix first. They are interconnected; modifying one element will affect another. At later stages, we would come to realise that our previous decision was inappropriate, resulting in countless rounds of revisions. Fine-tuning work is commonplace for artisans, but it still made us doubt every implication of our actions.

Another major challenge would be ensuring legibility of our typeface. We also had to ensure the geometric shape does not make the type appear too cute or flippant, especially when used in formal documents. It raised a crucial question in us: do we need other fonts for the text?

Q: How did the team overcome these challenges?

A: The first part of the problem was easy to tackle. Just be daring enough to explore and don’t be afraid to make mistakes.

As for font legibility, we came up with two variations: Shopee Display and Shopee Text. Shopee Display is the primary brand typeface. It saves more text space and has a greater visual impact. Hence, it is suitable to use in graphic design scenarios such as posters, banners, illustrations, and logos.

Shopee Text, on the other hand, is smoother and easier to read. It is more suited for long articles or presentation slides without many decorative elements. We designed it to be a standard font in most scenarios, where the intent is to provide a comfortable reading experience instead of capturing attention.

Q: What advice would you give to designers interested in typography?

A: First and foremost, I’d like to put it out there that typeface design is not complicated, but one must have passion for it. Research is one of the most crucial parts of the process, as it helps you gain a better understanding of your goal and the value that your work will have.

Creating a custom typeface does not mean you should aim to be better than other companies. It should be about building a unique personality for your brand. I always suggest being humble. Don’t strive for better; pursue uniqueness. As designers, we should not compete or challenge these companies but learn from them.

The important thing here is to understand why you want to design a typeface. It’s 2020; many renowned designers have contributed a multitude of excellent — perfect, even — fonts to the world. Large companies also provide rich language and style support, as well as display optimisation. If you want high-quality fonts, you can easily find them without having to build one yourself.

Well, in our case, we learned that once we have a unique visual aesthetic defined, it was time to express ourselves in the form of a custom typeface.

To read more about the typeface’s characteristics and how to utilise it in different scenarios, check out our brochure here.

Shopee is the leading e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia and Taiwan. Shopee connects shoppers, brands and sellers across Asia and other fast-growing markets, empowering anyone to buy and sell anywhere and at any time.

Shopee offers an easy, secure, and engaging experience that is enjoyed by millions of people daily. It offers a wide product assortment, supported by integrated payments and logistics, as well as popular entertainment features tailored for each market. Shopee is also a key contributor to the region’s digital economy with a firm commitment to helping brands and entrepreneurs succeed in e-commerce.

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