OB2.HOUSE

Mixmag, FACT, Crack, iLOVEmanchester and Manchester's Finest all covered the relaunch.

Limbo Radio
01

Challenge

Limbo is a non-profit community radio station streaming live from 4pm to 10pm every day, giving Manchester DJs and artists a platform and pulling in names from across the UK and Europe.

It had grown almost entirely on Instagram: a photo of the DJ, the set times, and a piece of artwork by a local creative. The website couldn't keep up: it played and paused audio, and nothing else. No navigation, no archive, no schedule.

Then the station moved from above a sandwich shop in Fallowfield to Downtex Mill, and needed a relaunch to match.

What the station had grown on: an Instagram grid, a photo of the DJ, the set times and a piece of artwork by a local creative.
The old site played and paused audio and did nothing else: no navigation, no archive, no schedule.
02

System

The site rebuild added live video streaming, an up-to-date schedule, a browsable archive of mixes and stories, resident profile pages and an online store.

The social template was the real system. Black and yellow held constant while primary and secondary frame colours changed with each DJ, so every post was recognisably Limbo and individually distinct, and volunteers could produce them without a designer.

The artist residency programme runs on the same logic: a documented template with three fixed ratios, so a different artist each week supplies seven pieces that drop straight into the schedule.

The rebuilt site: live video, an up-to-date schedule, a browsable archive, resident profiles and a store.
The daily schedule mark. Black and yellow hold constant; the frame colours move with the DJ.
The 2020 residents, set in the same system, a list that has to hold eighty names and still read as a poster.
The residency template, documented in three fixed ratios. A different artist each week supplies seven pieces that drop straight into the schedule. No designer in the loop.
Redmond, Thursday.
Beth Hobbs, Tuesday. Same frame, same type, completely different week.
Limbo Soup, the bi-monthly club night, running on the same two colours and a different can each time.
Second edition. The artwork changes; the structure does not.
Motion idents for the stream, built from the same flat vocabulary.
03

48-hour relaunch

The new studio launched with 48 straight hours of radio: over 43 acts, including Bruce, Arma, and Dr. Banana & OK Williams travelling in from outside Manchester.

The website's schedule couldn't render 48 continuous hours of listings, so we built a timeline banner instead. Because it was laid out on a strict grid, the same information broke cleanly into four twelve-hour blocks sized for Instagram and Facebook stories: one artefact, five placements.

Each artist got a template to post themselves, which turned 43 acts into 43 channels.

Forty-three acts over forty-eight continuous hours. The site's schedule could not render it, so the timeline became the artefact.
Because it was laid out on a strict grid, the same information broke cleanly into twelve-hour blocks sized for stories: one artefact, five placements.
Each artist got a template to post themselves, which turned 43 acts into 43 channels.
04

Outcome

The relaunch was covered by Mixmag, FACT, Crack, iLOVEmanchester and Manchester's Finest.

Merchandise, shot by the station in the mill.
The logotype had to survive embroidery at chest height on a dark fleece, which is a harder test than any screen.