The equaliser bar inspired Transmission Roundhouse’s monogram by Only

Transmission Roundhouse is the online station run by the established Camden venue, the Roundhouse, and since launching in 2018 has given a voice to young emerging talents in radio. With a workforce of show presenters and producers aged 18-25, the station is a platform for experimental content, radical opinions, and innovative, forward-thinking approaches to broadcasting. Its identity by Manchester design studio Only therefore had to convey some of that spirit, and appeal to its young audience.

Its brief was to “capture the full spectrum of underserved youth cultures represented by the station,” – no mean feat, but one that Only has tackled by ensuring the visual language is “current, not commercial,” it explains, “authentic, not faddy”. It began with the monogram, a blocky icon inspired by the movement of dynamic equaliser bars, hinting, Only says, at broadcast and transmission. As such, a cube of the T initial has been turned into a slider, and situated at the top corner of the rest of the monogram, it symbolises broadcasting frequencies.

This slider theme travels through the rest of the identity, with bold type – Univers LT Std – laid on top of photography by Kirsten Kerr in vertical and horizontal grids, used in a huge range of sizes or “volumes” as Only puts it. This embraces “individual identity and unique self-expression.”

Underlying the design is a concept coined by Only and Roundhouse as “cut through the noise” – a tagline to position the station as the home of experimental youth content, and convey its radical spirit.

Only previously worked with another London venue, Printworks, on its graphic identity which drew inspiration from the building’s former life as a printing press for the Evening Standard newspaper.