Longwave Community radio · identity and on-air system

Width is loudness.

Longwave broadcasts to Hull and the Humber on 40 watts and a lot of goodwill. Every title in the system is set at a width computed from that show’s integrated loudness, so a quiet programme is narrow and a loud one is wide. Nothing is ever bolded to shout, because the station already has a measurement for how loud a thing is and does not need a second, invented one.

Client
Longwave (invented)
Place
Hull, East Yorkshire
Style
Liquid type
After
Studio Feixen and elastic display lettering, 2026
Type
Anybody, width axis 50 to 150
Mapping
−30 to −12 LUFS → wdth 50 to 150
Target
−16 LUFS, so the mark is wdth 128
01

The wordmark is a measurement

Longwave delivers at −16 LUFS, which on the station’s own mapping is a width of 128. That is the wordmark. It was not chosen for looking right, and if the delivery target ever changes the mark changes with it.

Longwave
Station mark · wdth 128 Longwave
Narrow lock-up · wdth 50, 18 mm minimum Longwave
Full width · wdth 150, idents only Longwave

The mark, and the two widths it is allowed outside the mapping

Why 128
Because −16 LUFS is where the station delivers. Every other width in the system is derived the same way, from a number an engineer already had.
The two exceptions
50 for a narrow column and 150 for a full-frame ident. Both are the ends of the axis, not new values, so nobody has to decide what “quite narrow” means. The narrow lock-up has a floor of 18 mm, below which the counters close up and it is set at 100 instead.
Weight
Fixed at 800 everywhere. The weight axis exists in this family and the station does not use it, because two axes carrying the same signal is how a system stops meaning anything.
Never
Never a waveform, never a transmitter tower, never a pair of headphones. The station’s picture of itself is its own schedule, set to its own numbers.
02

Change a show’s loudness and watch it stretch

Pick a programme and move its measured loudness. The title’s width is recomputed from the mapping, live. Nothing on this schedule has a width typed into it.

−22 LUFS → wdth 94

quietest−30 → 50
station target−16 → 128
loudest−12 → 150

The rule running · wdth = 50 + (LUFS + 30) ÷ 18 × 100

Why LUFS
It is the number the station already logs for every programme it delivers. A design system that invents its own scale of loudness has added work; one that reads the existing log has not.
The floor
−30 is where the mapping stops. Below that a title would be narrower than the axis goes, so quiet programmes pile up at 50 rather than the scale being stretched to flatter them.
Rounding
Widths are whole numbers. A schedule where two shows differ by half a width unit is a schedule where the rule has stopped being visible, which is the same as not having one.
Reading it
Loudness is not importance. The wide shows are the noisy ones, not the good ones, and the station says so out loud so nobody starts lobbying for a wider title.
03

Bone, ink, and one signal

A community station on a small budget prints on cheap warm stock, so the palette starts there. One blue does every job colour is allowed to do, which is marking what is live.

Stock#F7F3EA
Ink#191A22
Signal#1F4FD8
Wash#ECE6D9

Four values · signal means on air, and nothing else

Signal
Used on the live badge, the current row of a schedule and the tuning link. Never on a heading, never on a pull quote, never to make a poster feel more energetic.
Where it cannot go
Signal on the ink ground measures 2.6 to 1, so it never appears as type on a dark panel. The ident uses stock on ink instead, and the badge puts white on signal at 6.6.
Dark
Stock and ink swap and signal lifts to #8AA5FF. Broadcast and printed artefacts do not swap: a tote bag has one colourway.
04

The axis had to be a real one

Anybody for anything with a loudness, weight fixed at 800, width running the whole 50 to 150. It was picked by measurement: across their full axes Roboto Flex travels 1.3 times and Archivo 1.85, where Anybody travels 2.95.

wdth 50 · −30 LUFS

Tide Table

wdth 94 · −22 LUFS

Estuary

wdth 128 · −16 LUFS

Longwave

wdth 150 · −12 LUFS

Full Tilt

Text

Body copy is set in a text face at a fixed width and stays there. The axis carries one signal only, and a paragraph is not a programme, so it has no loudness to encode and no business moving.

Weight is fixed at 800 throughout · the axis does all the work

Body
Roboto Flex at a fixed width, never the display face. Running text through the axis would make the rule decorative, and a decorative rule is one nobody follows for long.
Mono
Roboto Mono for times, frequencies and LUFS figures. Anything with a unit is mono, so a measurement never reads as a claim.
Never
Never italic, never a second family, never a heavier weight for emphasis. If something needs to be louder it is measured louder or it is not louder.
05

Applications

Six pieces. The printed schedule and the web player both read the same loudness log, so the widths agree without anybody keeping them in step by hand.

LongwaveWeeknights
19:00Tide Table
20:00Estuary
21:00The Landing
22:00Full Tilt
00:00Night Shift
Printed schedule · A5, widths from the log
Longwave 102.4 FM · Hull
Station ident · the only place the type melts
Longwave
Ade Fenwick
Station manager
Wincolmlee, Hull HU2
102.4 FM
Card · 85 × 55 mm
LongwaveOn air

Full Tilt

22:00–00:00 · −13 LUFS · wdth 144

Web player · width read from the same log
Longwave 102.4 FM · Hull
Tote · narrow lock-up, one colourway
LongwaveRule off
19:00Tide Table
20:00Estuary
21:00The Landing
22:00Full Tilt
00:00Night Shift
The same schedule with the axis ignored · for comparison
06

Voice

A station run by volunteers says what is on and when. It does not sell the listener a mood it has not measured.

Say

Full Tilt, 22:00. Two hours, loud, and it will be louder than the show before it.

An unmissable sonic journey through the night.

Say

−13 LUFS, so it sets at width 144.

We made the title bigger because it is our flagship show.

Say

40 watts, and we can be heard as far as Beverley on a good night.

Broadcasting to the region and beyond.

Say

Tide Table is the quietest thing we make, and it sets narrowest.

Tide Table is a smaller show, so it gets smaller type.

07

What breaks it

The axis is easy to copy and the measurement is not, so this system fails in one direction: width used as taste. Four ways, and the first ends it.

Tide Table
Width chosen by eye The one that ends it. A quiet show set wide because the poster had a gap to fill. Once a width can be picked, no width means anything, and the schedule is back to being a list of titles at whatever size the designer liked.
Full Tilt
Bolding to shout Weight brought in to make something feel urgent. The station already has a number for loud; adding a second signal means two things now claim to say how loud a show is, and they will disagree within a month.

Longwave broadcasts to Hull and the Humber on forty watts and a lot of goodwill from a shed behind a scrapyard.

The axis in body copy Running text pushed through the width axis because it looked striking. A paragraph has no loudness to encode, the line gets unreadable at both ends, and the rule becomes an effect.
Estuary The Landing Night Shift
Melting everything The goo belongs to the ident, where it lasts two seconds and nobody has to read it twice. Applied to a schedule it makes the one thing a listener came for, what is on at nine, the hardest thing on the page.

Longwave is invented, built as a portfolio exercise in the liquid type revival. Hull, the Humber, Wincolmlee and Beverley are real; this station, its frequency, programmes, staff and loudness figures are not, and 102.4 FM is not licensed to anyone here. The visual approach is after Studio Feixen and the elastic display lettering of about 2026, credited as an influence only. Part of the One Rule Each series.

Rule

Width is loudness. Every title is set at wdth = 50 + (LUFS + 30) ÷ 18 × 100, rounded to a whole unit, and nothing in the system is ever bolded to shout.