Orientation in the Digital Media Landscape

Expertises

SWR Stuttgart: Wayfinding

Südwestdeutscher Rundfunk (SWR) is one of the largest of Germany’s nine public broadcasters. In addition to regional reporting, SWR also produces national programming. Classic television and radio formats, and increasingly also digital content, are devised in the SWR broadcasting house in Stuttgart. Our floor signs transport this focal shift in the media landscape into the interior of the main SWR building. Our wayfinding system for SWR has roots in the past and in the regional context of this media house, while at the same time enriching the visual identity with the self-understanding of a digital media institution that looks to the future.

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Facts & Figures

Südwestrundfunk SWR Stuttgart: Wayfinding l1

The guidance system has roots in the past, while at the same time enriching the visual identity with the self-understanding of a digital media institution that looks to the future.

Südwestrundfunk SWR Stuttgart: Wayfinding l3

For our design, we draw on a photograph of the broadcasting house, designed by Rolf Gutbrod, which we have transfigured by converting it into a raster image and paring back the colour palette to blue and white. This creates a vertical gallery of twelve dynamic floor signs. Abstraction and alienation give each of the large-format circles their own artistic quality. The digital-looking moirés symbolise the plurality and progressive orientation of SWR. As pixel landscapes, they create digital worlds, and conjure up associations with test and interference images on television. We pick up on this static noise in the illuminated ceiling elements, which bring an additional dynamic into the corridors and lift lobbies of the building with their irregular, yet ordered grid structure.