Kutlu Çanlıoğlu: Creating a Global Experience Language for the BBC

Kutlu Çanlıoğlu, Senior Creative Director for the BBC World Service, gave a detailed analysis of the process he went through in helping to create a Global Experience Language (GEL) for their news websites, which reach 180 million people each week, in 27 languages and 9 scripts.

Photo Credit: Amber Gregory


“The era of low expectations for type on the web is finally at an end,” he said. Kutlu broke down how, with this idea in mind, he and his team, including fellow TYPO SF speaker Neville Brody, developed a layout and typography system that was simultaneously localized,  flexible, and based on strong principles of design. He showcased the beautiful solutions the team came up with to deal with the challenge of creating a standards based site across such a wide range of locales, cultures, and languages.
Kutlu Çanlıoğlu

Kutlu Çanlıoğlu

Kutlu Çanlıoğlu is Senior Creative Director for BBC World Service, a role where he is responsible for the user experience and design of 27 different language services, including those in Arabic, Russian, Mandarin, Hindi, Urdu, and Spanish. He studied architecture and sociology at Istanbul's Mimar Sinan University before working as a graphic designer at the daily newspaper Radikal. He then joined EK Ltd, a studio specialising in editorial design, and worked with a wide range of print and digital projects for clients including the UN, Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, Goethe Institute, Unilever and Wyeth. He moved to London to complete an MA in Typography at the London College of Printing where he gained recognition for exploring the relationship between type and punctuation in an innovative and ambitious interactive motion graphics piece. At the BBC World Service he runs a team that designs news websites and mobile products across nine different scripts as well as the multi-lingual content management systems that drive them. He is also responsible for info-graphics and data visualization projects to support the 24/7 multi-lingual news coverage for diverse audiences around the world. Kutlu is also the Typography Discipline Lead at the BBC, responsible for championing the role of craftsmanship around typography in the context of the BBC's new Global Experience Language.

Jack Whittington