Health Club
Building a Web presence for an exclusive fitness club.
“I have found the Iron to be my greatest friend. It never freaks out on me, never runs. Friends may come and go. But two hundred pounds is always two hundred pounds.”
“The Iron” by Henry Rollins
We were thinking a lot about this quote by Henry Rollins (a long time addict to the iron) while working on this project, and it fit so well with the message we wanted to get across. When you come to the gym leave all the crap behind, and focus on the workout. For that hour and a half, nothing else matters.
Toma — the coach — insists not calling it a gym, but rather a club, and that's really the most fitting term to describe it. The gym itself is nothing fancy, there’s no expensive or hi–tech equimpent, it's not a hi–class establishment, we simply exercise, have fun and share laughs together. But the workouts are still gut–wrenching.
For that hour and a half during the session, the world is black or white.
Can you lift that or not? Are you strong enough? Can you last another ten seconds? Are you going to puke?
All straight yes or no questions.
With all this in mind, Stefan came up with a custom, hand–drawn logotype, slightly rotated and slanted, as if it is performing a stretching routine. The weight is there to represent all the hard work that goes on there day in, and day out; also because Toma insisted.
How do you design for a gym that's not your average gym? There are no programs called “Booty”, or “CorExpress”. It's clearly all about the attitude. The people. All the people who come every day, and leave better than they were before they got there. How do you capture that atmosphere, and embed it into a website or a logo? How do you make someone want to become a part of that experience?
These were the questions we were asking ourselves when we accepted the challenge of designing this site — the challenge being that we don't usually design this kind of websites, and focusing mostly on Web application interfaces and startup marketing sites.
We needed to do what anyone needs to do before they try changing their lifestyle and get into healthy living — step out of our comfort zone. Embrace the new boundaries and restrictions. Tread new paths. Find new ways.
The home page concept
Almost as like a motivational poster, we stripped the home page down to the bare essentials. A big photo backdrop, and across the middle of the screen we ran a single word sentence: “Idemo.”, (translates to “Let's go.”) That single word is everything you need to start making your life better through fitness and exercise. It's not the equipment, or the looks you should be after, it's the lifestyle, it's you.
During the research phase, we came up with a bunch of these slogans for the home page. Some were funny, some were inside jokes, and others were intentionally pretencious.
Textpattern Integration
We partnered with Jovana Dačić from Codalicious_ for the backend work. The entire website is buit upon Textpattern, our trusty old CMS we wouldn't trade in for a million WordPresses. The site is blazing fast, secure, and easily updated.
Photography
This project would definitely have turned out the way it did if we didn’t bring in our friend Nikola Bradonjić, who’s skills with the camera gave a whole new dimension to this project.