The evolution of the Deutsche Bahn brand over recent years has rendered some of its technology visually and structurally outdated, creating a noticeable gap between its modern identity and user-interface systems.

Our collaboration focused on redesigning DB timetables to align with their new design language. This included refreshing the landscape format with a modern aesthetic and introducing an entirely new portrait format. The key challenge was ensuring both formats remained visually cohesive while being accessible to the diverse user group frequenting train stations across Germany.

To achieve a streamlined visual appearance, the landscape format was divided into two sections that reflect a similar aspect ratio to the traditional 9:16 portrait format. Both versions display a high number of departures while maintaining accessibility through clear typography, balanced colors, and well-considered spacing.

While the portrait format retained its predecessors approach for adding and removing departures, creating an intuitive animation flow for the landscape format proved a difficult challenge. Ultimately, its two sections were designed to work separately from each other: the left side displays the nearest upcoming departures, while the right side features a pagination, enabling the display of a much larger volume of information seamlessly.

The backbone of the collaboration is the robust design system, which ensures visual consistency not only with other Deutsche Bahn products but also between the two formats. Existing elements, such as iconography, were expanded to cover all potential use cases, reinforcing a cohesive and scalable design approach.