3+ Logo Brings Switzerland’s Private TV Channels Into One Family

For years, Switzerland’s 3+ had a logo that did exactly what it needed to do. A large 3, a plus sign, a familiar place in the corner of the television screen. The problem appeared when 3+ stopped being just one channel in a relatively simple TV landscape. Its family grew, viewing habits changed, and the same identity had to travel from a living-room television to streaming platforms and phone screens. By 2026, the old system was showing its age.

CH Media has now given it a fairly thorough cleanup. The new 3+ logo arrived on September 17 as part of a rebrand covering eight free-to-air channels, timed to the flagship station’s 20th anniversary.

The basic idea survives untouched. It is still 3+. There’s no new name to learn, no mysterious icon replacing the number and certainly no attempt to hide twenty years of recognition behind an abstract symbol.

What has changed is almost everything around those two characters.

The new 3 and + are flatter, cleaner and more geometric. Gone are the glossy effects and heavier styling that belonged comfortably to an earlier period of television graphics. The curves of the 3 have been tightened up, while the plus sign has become a particularly important part of the new system.

That little + now has considerably more work to do.

It links 3+ to its sister stations, including 4+, 5+, 6+ and 7+, all of which have been brought under the same visual structure. Rather than allowing each channel to develop its own unrelated badge, CH Media uses the same proportions, weight and basic typography across the family. Color does much of the separating.

It’s an obvious solution once you see the channels together. A viewer moving from 3+ to 5+ shouldn’t have to work out whether the two belong to the same broadcaster. The number changes, the color changes, but the visual grammar stays put.

Television has plenty of examples of that approach. BBC has spent decades using a strong master identity while allowing BBC One, BBC Two and its other services to develop individual colors and personalities. MTV, meanwhile, has repeatedly changed the graphics, textures and animation surrounding its famous mark without sacrificing the basic logo everyone recognizes. CH Media’s system is less flamboyant, but the advantage is similar: consistency where it helps, freedom where it doesn’t.

The biggest difference becomes apparent once the logos start moving.

The plus sign isn’t confined to the corner of the screen. In promos and commercial bumpers it can expand, shift and become a frame for footage, opening sections of the screen to reveal a program or schedule. That gives CH Media a graphic device it can repeat without covering every transition in channel numbers and extra decoration.

The rest of the on-air package follows the same idea. Program information, lower-thirds and menus use cleaner typography and smoother movement. Nothing is especially complicated, which is rather the point. Television graphics have to appear, deliver information and get out of the way before viewers start paying more attention to the interface than the program.

The redesign also solves a problem that barely existed when 3+ launched in 2006. A TV logo is no longer designed mainly for television.

It has to survive as a tiny icon on a smartphone, appear in streaming menus, sit over vertical social video and still look convincing when enlarged for outdoor advertising. The old glossy treatment could manage some of those jobs, but it carried visual effects that were increasingly unnecessary.

The new artwork has been built as a clean vector system. At large sizes, the geometry stays sharp. Reduced to the little on-air bug in the corner, the number and plus remain easy to read. There isn’t a gradient or dimensional effect that needs enough pixels to make sense.

That sounds like a technical detail, but for a broadcaster it is a fairly important one. The smallest version of the logo may be the one audiences see most often.

Color now does more of the expressive work that texture once handled. Each sister channel gets its own palette while sharing the same construction, which should make it easier to tell the stations apart without losing the family resemblance. 3+ remains the flagship and keeps the strongest position in the hierarchy.

There’s a commercial advantage to that arrangement as well. 3+ has spent twenty years building recognition in Switzerland. Extending its visual language across the portfolio lets the newer or smaller channels borrow some of that familiarity rather than starting again with eight separate identities.

It also makes promotion between stations much simpler. A trailer moving viewers from one channel to another doesn’t have to jump into a completely different graphic world. Swap the number and color, and the relationship is already clear.

That is particularly useful as the distinction between a television channel and a digital entertainment brand becomes increasingly blurry. Someone might encounter a program through a traditional broadcast, a streaming interface or a clip on social media. The logo needs to identify the source before the viewer has time to think about which platform it came from.

For all the talk of digital-first design, though, the strongest part of the redesign is that it hasn’t made 3+ look like a software company. The number is still the number. The plus is still the plus. The designers have simply stripped away the pieces that were tying both of them to an older generation of TV graphics.

Twenty years after the channel launched, that feels like enough of a change. 3+ keeps the name people know, its sister channels finally look unmistakably related, and the humble plus sign has become the busiest piece of the whole identity.