RGB was founded in 1987 by Max Whitby as a vehicle for independent media production. The company’s initial focus was factual television. In the 1990s RGB produced documentaries for the BBC's flagship science series Horizon, broadcast in the US on WGBH’s NOVA, along with many other programmes including a 13-part series of natural history films.
As digital media became a commercial reality, RGB has delivered a sequence of large-scale, high-profile, interactive projects including a hands-on operational TV studio for children (installed in the science centre At-Bristol), a sell-out 3D virtual tour of an Ancient Egyptian mummy (for The British Museum in partnership with Windfall Films), an interactive encyclopaedia of human emotions (for Cambridge University) and DNA Interactive marking the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the double helix (US $2 million grant from Howard Hughes Medical Institute).
Over the last decade, RGB has worked in close partnership with Theodore Gray to develop a series of projects around science education, chemistry and particularly the periodic table of elements. This fruitful collaboration has led to the formation of two new companies: in 2010 the app developer and publisher Touchpress Ltd and in 2014 the spin-out RGB Research Ltd, which is dedicated to the creation of the world’s most beautiful periodic table displays. In 2021 Max Whitby, Theodore Gray and Fiona Barclay re-acquired publishing rights to the collection of apps they created at Touch Press.
RGB projects have received four BAFTA nominations and the company has won two BAFTA Awards (for birdguides.com and for DNA Interactive).