Background

For an established brand like Bukalapak, a strong brand identity is more than just a visual appeal, it’s a way to communicate about the brand’s vision and values. As one of the Indonesian biggest E-commerce, Bukalapak needs a fresh visual appeal and brand identity upgrade to connect with their audiences.  They used to have a sturdy and bold typeface in their identity. The rounded shape somehow looks too wide and overly used with all contrast details, which didn’t align with Bukalapak’s refined identity. Also, the new typeface needed a balanced and well-structured proportions, just like Roboto and Helvetica. 

Designing the brand’s typeface isn’t only creating letterforms, but requires extra attention. Since the brand has both visually and functionally issues, we must take it carefully. Visually, Bukalapak needs some fun and expressiveness to align with the identity. Due to Bukalapak users being diverse, we need to maintain balance the typeface’s readability and legibility in both print and digital platforms.

Brief

In collaboration with Thinking Room Inc, we began the process by initiating a mini-workshop to define the visual direction for the new brand identity. From this session, we generated some directions to developing the refreshed identity, including the custom typeface. 

The process began with establishing the character proportions, and continued by adding some weight. Next is a crucial step, we needed to add some character—the typeface would be different from the others. We designed distinctive letterforms yet still maintained its functionality. The uniqueness can be found in the curved lowercase f, double-story lowercase y, and the spurless uppercase G. Several character refinements also found in flat-ended lowercase t and tailed lowercase l, reflected the identity within the typeface. 

During the trial process, both production and marketing teams had some contrast objective. An efficiency needed in production, while the marketing team prioritized the expression. Considering that issue, we tailored two versions, Buka Sans Display and Buka Sans Text. 

Both Buka Sans Display and Text play a crucial role in Bukalapak’s typographic needs. Initial framework development started by making Buka Sans Display have a compact appearance on a large-scale. For Buka Sans Text, optical adjustments were made to retain the legibility in a smaller scale, while compromising the uniqueness.

Delivery

The biggest difference between those two is the apperture’s size. Buka Sans Text was set wider to create some space in its counters. The higher X-height ensures a balanced proportions while optimizing the space between Caps Height and X-height. 

However, Buka Sans Display is designed to look more solid, especially on the weights. With tighter apertures that enhance its visual presence by delivering a solid and bold appearance. 

Bukalapak’s brand identity shows how the typography can convey the communication through the brand’s vision and visual character. Consistent and effective communication is the key in this collaboration. With a clear understanding and intentions—in teamworks and the brand goals, we were able to push our best work towards our exploration, until finally creating the true voice of Bukalapak.

Buka Sans® becomes more than a typeface, thus a powerful and effective brand asset that brings Bukalapak a brand with some personality. This typeface is designed to be used in wide-range applications. It came in ten styles, ranging from Light to Black. These weights offer different experiences in several design needs. Light version brings sophisticated feels, while Regular, Medium, and Bold are great for headlines and body text, keeping things clear and readable.

We would like to delight a big thanks to our collaborators, Thinking Room Inc. and Bukalapak Design Team for a great teamwork in developing this typeface from sketch to the screen! Special appreciation to Budi Tanrim, Yoel Krisnanda, Steve Lionardo, and Edho Pratomo for all the support and opportunity to work alongside with the team!