The MDR is the east german branch of the ARD. A public broadcaster with over 100 brands, over 70 social media channels and historically divided into TV, Radio and online divisions. Our task was to transfer the newly developed transformative strategy into one coherent design system to unify TV, digital and social media.

Over a span of 9 months we partnered closely with various MDR in-house teams. Along the collaborative journey we established a coherent digital first design process to unify the realms of TV, digital and social media. The result is a frictionless brand experience worthy of a modern and confident public broadcaster.

The existing monolith from 2014 transformed into an open and flexible element. Derived from the idea of an adaptive frame we designed over 120+ elements following the core idea. The results comes in form of various toolkits & templates for a cross-channel promotion system, a social media graphic language and an abundance of digital applications.

The coherent system is used across all channels
to choreograph campaigns and promotions.

The newly designed MDR »Typogramm« (designed by Scholz & Friends, Berlin) becomes the creative cell of the rebranding. It transforms through the seasons, signals categories and provides a playground for all sorts of brand storytelling. 

The design system extends to a simple yet powerful social media toolkit enabling inhouse design teams to push out coherent content on all platforms. The system was build on a simple layer principle and a set of animation templates. The frame element becomes an imaginative device to enable a more playful tone of voice and visual variation.