Our third brief for the year focused more on client-based work; in other words, as if a client had approached us and asked us to do something for them. We were given six ‘clients’ to choose from, all with varying conditions, but the client that I chose was for the gym client, Fitnessé. 

To begin my research, I decided to first look at gym logos.

 

 

 

As you can see, many of these logos featured either flexed muscles or weights. They typically focus on strength, something that their primary audience are usually looking to gain. They also use a lot of neutral colours – excluding the greenpower logo, which is obviously green because of its title. I liked the simplicity of these designs, but I found them all to be too obvious, or too repetitive; there were many, many of these sort of designs and not much variation. Although some of them seemed quite clever – the use of the G shape in the God’s Gym logo, and the leaf-turned-arm in the greenpower logo – again, most of them seemed too obvious. I decided at this point that I wanted to try something that was simple and clearly referenced what the product was about, but that didn’t feature the typical stereotypes, such as weights or flexed muscles.

 

I decided to then look at female gym logos, as Fitnessé is an all-female gym. Again, there were many similarities between the logos that I managed to find. For example, the colour schemes were for the majority either featured pink or soft, warm colours such as peach — though, again, an exception of this can be found in Curve. They also used soft flowing lines for their font, as seen in the majority of the logos above, and a lot of them used a flowing silhouette for their logo, as seen in In Shape and FitHer. Although I did like the use of the flowing silhouettes, the overall result of these logos made me feel they focused too much on feeling soft and calm, in stark comparison to the gym logos in my first lot of research. I then decided that I would look at perhaps combining the two types of logos to create one that not only reflected on the femininity of the gym, but also broke stereotypes and therefore would attract a larger demographic, as my brief suggested.