SPH Radio, one of the two major broadcasting and media companies in Singapore, was seeking an agency to provide a new brand concept direction in line with their shift in their radio programming strategy. The station 91.3FM had seen multiple branding changes in the last 5 years with no hint of commercial success.

SPH Radio approached Mark De Winne and Sarah Cheng-De Winne as they were the previous leads in designing Kiss92FM’s brand identity and strategy that was launched in 2012, Singapore’s top English radio station within 2 years of launch, whose brand that continues to be relevant and strong even 6 years on.

We set out to achieve the following with the brand identity:

• Position ONEFM as a brand that identities with other brands the target audience associate themselves with, dispelling the notion of a male-oriented station.
• Create a personality for the station that conveys grown-up fun, attracting professionals from both genders, an inclusive brand that extends beyond “radio” and into lifestyle.
• Leverage on distinctive typography to create a stand-out brand that can be extended to a wide range of branding and marketing activations.

Creating Visual Hooks

Some of the key features of the brand identity we wanted to translate are

• Visual Hook of the “n” to create that “grown-up fun”, expressiveness that we found in the original source inspiration that related strongly to the music.
•  The client however required the station frequency, 91.3 to take more precedence. Therefore, upon further development, we created an additional Visual Hook where the “3” was made of a ‘.’ and also a truncated “3”, making it both visually interesting to the eye and a compact form that did not compromise on readability.
• To increase readability of the “ONE FM” portion, the “FM”was tweaked to the secondary color of purple to distinguish the phrase as made of two words. We advised against the use of black, which was used in their previous logo, to move away from the very “hard” “rock” image they had once espoused.