RTL Luxembourg, RTL AdAlliance, Smartclip and RTL+ in Germany have all been recognised in the 2024 German Design Awards.

Every year, the German Design Awards honour outstanding design achievements in a variety of categories. Outstanding design, according to the creators of the awards, means providing answers to current demands and focusing on society and the impact of products and services through multi-perspective approaches, sustainable and circular design processes or resource- and environmentally-friendly production.

In the 2024 German Design Awards, four RTL Group business units have been recognised, with Smartclip winning in two different categories.

Smartclip – a new brand identity

Making ad tech tangible: This was the goal of Smartclip’s new visual identity, which was introduced in September 2023. The revamped website uses an innovative approach, including 3D motion graphics and people-centric imagery to bring ad tech to life.

At the German Design Awards 2024, the new brand identity has won the award for ‘Excellent Communications Design: Brand Identity’, while the website has been recognised in the ‘Excellent Communications Design: Web’ category.
The jury praised Smartclip’s new brand identity with the following statement: “Smartclip offers innovative ad tech solutions for leading European TV stations. The design appears high-quality and conveys the demand for high-tech, but also creates an emotional closeness through the striking colour scheme, which refers to the passion of the people behind the brand.”

RTL Luxembourg – a new channel identity

In April 2023, RTL Luxembourg adopted the unified RTL brand identity, presenting a new design across TV, websites, apps, social media and visual radio. The rebranding was supported by French design agency Gédéon, which started its creative work using RTL Group’s brand identity guidelines as a basis and adapted them to the specific DNA of RTL Luxembourg.

The multi-coloured RTL logo serves as the key visual for RTL Luxembourg, presented in three shades of red. Moreover, images from Luxembourg and the famous faces of the channel were split, repeated or mixed to create clips for programme openers, promos and video backgrounds for the studios.

“RTL Luxembourg's new channel identity raises the standard of programme diversity and quality to a new modern, contemporary and dynamic level, without the slightest loss of previous brand recognition,” commented the jury of the German Design Awards on the rebranding, which has been recognised in the same category – ‘Excellent Communications Design: Brand Identity’ – as Smartclip’s new brand identity.

RTL+ Musik & RTL AdAlliance

In August 2022, RTL+ launched RTL+ Musik, offering users access to over 90 million songs. The expansion of RTL Deutschland’s streaming service was accompanied by a cross-media marketing campaign. The campaign covered the See (awareness), Think (engagement & traffic) and Do (subscription) phases – innovatively addressing and acting on the entire marketing funnel.

The jury has recognised the campagin in the ‘Excellent Communications Design: Integrated Campaigns, Advertising’ category and praised its “fresh and cheeky typography that stands out and arouses curiosity”.

Also during the summer of 2022, RTL AdAlliance (formerly RTL AdConnect) headed to the beach during the Cannes Lions festival for four days of discussions around Total Video. The design of the event, including furniture, on-screen videos, newsletters, merchandise and outdoor communications, was created by Gédéon and has won in the ‘Excellent Communications Design: Event’ category at the German Design Awards.

Since then, our international advertising sales house returned to the beach in July 2023, where more than 4,000 visitors enjoyed a full programme of 18 panels with 60 speakers, featuring industry-relevant topics.