rtl united, a prime time font family

rtl united is a bespoke font-family commissioned by rtl goup for their new brand identity.

rtl group (radio television luxembourg) is a luxembourg-based international media conglomerate, with another corporate centre in cologne, germany. the company operates 68 television channels and 31 radio stations in germany, france and other european countries. it also offers national streaming platforms, content productions and a range of digital services. important segments of rtl group are rtl deutschland, groupe m6, fremantle, rtl nederland and rtl belgium.

in mid-2021, rtl’s in-house design team contacted us to develop a bespoke font for the rtl rebranding. initially, the brand development had been carried out using our basier font as they were in love with its friendly neutrality.

without losing sight of the starting point, the font project evolved towards a balanced mix between a neo-grotesque font and a geometric one, but seen from a current perspective where neutrality and character meet somewhere in between.

for the development of this big font family we worke together with arilla type studio.

finally, they proposed to build a type system with three font families: text, modified (with a specific width and weight for, in principle, the nomenclature of the sub-brands and the names of the television channels) and display. the text family would be totally functional for text and micro sizes on screen and close to the initial basier design. the display family would be an evolution of the text face but it would include some cool features and playful characters to shine at big sizes.

the wide palette of weights allows covering all kinds of uses from both print and digital use: mobile apps, printed corporate material, websites, signage, animations and videos.

in addition to the development of the typographic family, rtl commissioned us to develop a bepoke set of icons that would maintain the same spirit as the font. the icon set design is based on the shapes of the rtl logo (the bowl and leg of the "r" letter) and has a clean, neat look and is specially designed to work at small sizes.