Contact Max

Contact Max

Branding

Contact Max is a new radio station in the Radio Contact group, at RTL Belgium. The constraint fitted in one sentence: the logo had to work inside a brand universe that already existed. Not build a new one beside it, and not dissolve into it either.

Client
RTL Belgium · Radio Contact
Role
Brand identity
Year
2025

Produced in-house at RTL Belgium.

The starting point

RTL Belgium launches a little sister to Radio Contact, devoted to the music of the seventies, eighties and nineties. A new station, but not an independent one: it had to introduce itself as a family member, recognisable at a glance as part of the group, while carrying the energy of its own programming. All the work happened in that narrow gap, between the heritage to respect and the personality to establish.

RTL Belgium · Radio Contact — Brand identity (visual 1)
RTL Belgium · Radio Contact — Brand identity (visual 2)
RTL Belgium · Radio Contact — Brand identity (visual 3)
The approach

Everything comes from Radio Contact, except four degrees

The guidelines say it on their cover: this branding is derived from Radio Contact's. The dolphin does not move, it stays lodged in the C of Contact, and the three blues are the parent brand's, from Deep Blue to Light Blue. What belongs to Max is the word itself, set in very bold Gilroy, and the handwritten baseline in Caveat. Both are placed with the same reproducible rule, a four degree tilt and a slight skew, and that is enough to make a livelier station audible without leaving the family. It reads as very little, and that is exactly the job: the new station has to be recognisable at first glance, and belong to the group at second glance. A radio station is seen mostly off air, and that is where the derivation gets tested. The logo runs on social media, on a t-shirt, on a tote bag and on the station car: four settings where it sits alongside the group's other brands, sometimes side by side. Each time the same question, is Max recognised without hesitation, and is it clear it belongs to Radio Contact. The four-degree tilt answers both, and no application needed an exception.

RTL Belgium · Radio Contact — Brand identity (visual 4)
RTL Belgium · Radio Contact — Brand identity (visual 5)
RTL Belgium · Radio Contact — Brand identity (visual 6)
RTL Belgium · Radio Contact — Brand identity (visual 7)
RTL Belgium · Radio Contact — Brand identity (visual 8)
How we work

The same four steps, every project

See our expertise · Art Direction, Branding & Naming

  1. Discovery

    We start with a real conversation about your project: where it comes from, who it speaks to, what already exists around you. We analyse your competitors, because an identity that looks like the one next door will do nothing for you.

  2. Direction

    We hand you our reading of the project: the structure we propose, the stages, what will need to be produced, and a first take on style through mood boards. The point is simple, making sure we are all looking the same way before anything gets created.

  3. Framing

    Three genuinely different logo directions, which we then iterate on together. You watch the brand take shape and you decide while there is still room to change your mind.

  4. Production and delivery

    The longest stage, paced by regular back and forth. At the end: the brand book as a PDF, every asset filed in a shared folder, source files on request, and a brand resource page of your own, a single address holding everything we have made together.

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