Bibliographisches Institut GmbH

Duden Online is the international authority when it comes to the German language. In 2018, during my internship at Edenspiekermann, I had the chance to work together with Daniel Tibi and Silke Krieg for three months to reshape and define a new visual language for Duden.

Within these 3 months, we've defined a visual language that separates entertaining content from the more educational content and tools. Throughout the process, we've also helped Duden shift their online focus — becoming a provider of helpful digital services rather than an online bookstore.

My focus during this sprint was mostly on tackling complex structures & functionalities as providing a solid responsive solution for the German grammar tables, the navigation, and the search functionality. While I also helped out with the visual language, this was not my main priority.

The biggest challenge we faced was the enormous target group. This group consisted of not only German natives (e.g. everyday people, professional writers, linguaphiles) but also German learners (e.g. students, foreigners, immigrants). Duden's publisher is striving to make Duden the number one reference for the German language worldwide, so Duden Online had to reflect this.