Brand Manual for German News Media Brand

I started working with WELT in 2019, when I joined Brand Communication as a design intern. Back then, my job was to translate the direction of our Head of Brand into production-ready assets across teams and formats. Over the years, that role shifted: from executing the system to actively shaping it as the Senior Brand Designer.

By 2023, the brand’s design direction and day-to-day stewardship sat with me.

That’s what this project really is: not a rebrand, not a flashy makeover: but a clear, practical framework that helps WELT stay unmistakably WELT across print, TV, and digital.

WELT shows up everywhere: television studios, apps, websites, print products, social media, and physical merchandise. In a fast-paced news environment, consistency can quickly break (and very often does) not because people don’t care, but because teams need answers that work under pressure.

The goal of the Brand Manual was to reduce ambiguity and speed up confident decision-making. It brings the essentials into one coherent system:

The centerpiece is the WELT logo - including the characteristic lowercase “e” - treated as a system, not just a mark. The guide defines when to use the positive, negative, or tile version, and makes the don’ts explicit (no recoloring, distortion, decorative misuse, or improvised tiles). This matters because the logo appears in countless contexts, often produced quickly, often by different teams. Clear guardrails protect recognition.

Color is handled with the same intent. WELT Blue remains the anchor, supported by WELT Orange as an activating accent and a structured set of secondary colors for charts, formats, and thematic content - with values that hold up reliably across media.

Typography adds the editorial voice: a modern, clear grotesk for precision paired with a display serif for weight and storytelling - with concrete usage rules so the system works for everything from TV graphics to digital UI and long-form text.

One high-impact chapter for a newspaper is language: how we write WELT, how we refer to all the products - and where exceptions exist for readability in business contexts. These details aren’t “nice to have.” For a media brand that lives in words, consistency in naming is as important as consistency in layout.

The manual includes practical downloads (logo packages, templates, email signatures, backgrounds) and clear contact points for approvals, questions, and special cases - designed to support everyday work across departments and external partners. It’s a living system meant to reduce friction, not add it.

Sometimes the most impactful design work isn’t the loudest. It’s the structure that makes everything else work smoothly - and keeps a brand strong, even when production moves fast.

More to share soon!