How To Design A Gym?

1. Reject the 6 design trends that have the fitness industry locked in a death spiral of better sameness and avoid with great prejudice boutique or luxury design.

2. Create Your Own Unique Power Brand.

"Gym Power Branding is the integration of a brand aesthetic across all the features of your gym resulting in a unique and uber-cool gym model that upstages competition"

                                                                                            Cuoco Black 2015

"Employing Design Trends Blurs Your Brand --- Power Branding Makes Yours The Market Standout"

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CASE STUDY

“Cuoco Black's design helps us close the deal on the presale tour, hands down, end of story”.                           Vince Consalvo, Owner, Mid City Gym

Client: Mid City Gym established in 1962 is arguably the oldest continuously running gym in the country predating Joe Gold's 1965 opening of his Venice Beach landmark. It was home to notable fitness celebrities including Dave Draper, Lee Haney and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Concept/Inspiration: The design was inspired by an old photograph hanging in the gym endorsed by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Sparked by Arnold's illustrious career we cultivated an idea that a gym design reflecting the excitement of one of his Hollywood Blockbuster's, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, would make a fitting concept exhibiting energy and excitement.... powerful motivators in a gym environment. 

Context: Situated in one of the busiest neighborhoods in the world, Times Square and 42nd Street, the gym's design would need to exhibit powerful aesthetics in the highly energized and vibrant Theater District.

RULE #1 Have A Concept

The men's and women's locker room for Mid City Gym validates our argument that locker room design does NOT have to embrace the boutique design trend. Colored panels, metallic curtains, concrete, plastic laminate lockers, and picture lights above them, meld into a powerful design aesthetic that reinforces the brand. This Is Gym Power Branding at its finest. The circa 1960's Italian scrolled mirror in the women's locker room leavens the harshness of the concrete and provides a subtle yet feminine aesthetic for the room..



In summary: Envision your own unique concept for your gym brand....integrate all manner of back-linking and reinforcing of the concept...reject all design trends and specifically boutique design....deliver a unique model to the market that which the competition cannot copy.....dominate your market.Brand Don't Trend

 

Learn more about Mid City Gym: Mid City Gym

About Cuoco Black:

Cuoco Black is a design academic, interior designer, entrepreneur and natural bodybuilder. He's a former faculty member and holds a BFA with Distinction, and a Professional Design Diploma, from the New York School of Interior Design, ranked 4th in the World for superior interior design curriculum's by US News and World Report. Cuoco Black is additionally the designer of the Experimental Cocktail Club, Paris France, rated one of the top 20 Bars in the world by foodandwine.com.

Consider printing this helpful guide and keeping it at hand when developing your new gym brand.                                                                                                          Cuoco Black 2015

The design elements, ideas, and practices illustrated in this post are routinely embraced by many gym brands and across all market segments. Luxury gyms, the chains, independents and even CrossFit Boxes employ many of these commonplace and cliché design elements. The elements themselves are not so much the problem as is the blurring of your brand by adopting them. As well, these cross category design ideas are used in all manner of commerce leading to pedestrian and exhausted design trends.  

The underlying message.... deliver your own unique brand to your market and reject formulaic design features used by your competition.

                                                                   BRAND DON'T TREND

Boutique Design is a beautiful design aesthetic which we often advise against embracing as it says nothing about fitness or a gym brand. However, like every trend, these models cannibalize their own as evidenced by the identical long wood slab in these three different gyms...........If you're going to develop a luxury brand ignore the design features that others use, don't be an upscale gym wannabe. Leave this aesthetic to the luxury gym 1%-ers and be your own brand.

Graffiti was a popular social and political art form reaching its zenith in the late 1970's and early 1980's. Its urban colorful caustic vernacular was initially revered, but then loathed as it became associated with a crime, yet the art continues to be embraced by gyms....it's 2015. For all intents and purposes there is a goldmine of graphic design talent online at websites like 99 Designs that can provide you with graphics that are beautiful, stylish, contemporary and "uniquely marketable".

Slogans There is nothing that de-motivates me more than slogans meant to motivate me. I'm not sure of the intent. Is it subliminal mind mapping or the fact that the brand could find nothing more to fill a blank wall. This design feature borders on pandering and the Internet is overrun with motivational jargon and meme's in our social media feeds. Be original not subliminal.

Stone Walls So many gym brands use this design element as a symbol of strength, warmth and luxury. However, after seeing it gracing the walls of a McDonald's (snobby-sarcasm) McCafe, center image, I knew that it was a luxury design feature that had run its course.

Minimalism "Less is More" is the mantra of this American visual arts phenomena of the 60' and 70's. It's an aesthetic defined as pared-down that has paired-up with boutique design providing gym developers with a style that is simply banal. You can call it sophisticated but I see little that says anything distinctive with this over exhausted cliché.

Mirrored Soffits The happy bedfellow of our preceding hanging pendant light feature is the geometrically shaped overhead soffit that mirrors the shape of the reception desk below. Occasionally, this can be done exceedingly well. Often, as in this image, the design feature is too literal and contrived.

Boutique Design Lighting Fixtures The hallmark of the hospitality design industry are these cylindrical lighting fixtures which grace the ceilings of virtually tens of thousands, if not hundreds or thousands of hotels, restaurants, retail stores, condominiums, dry cleaners, Rite Aids and now......fitness facilities. Again, the center and far right images are McDonald's...don't be a McGymDonald's. 

HID (High Intensity Discharge) and Fluorescent Lighting This is often difficult to overcome as it's usually bundled with the build out provided by a landlord. However, moving to LED' has many benefits beyond what I can deliver in this post. The greatest disadvantage of these lighting fixtures is the quality of the light washing the interior of a gym, rendering the aesthetic sensibilities to that of the interior of a department store or Home Depot.

Reception Desks Gyms, McDonald's and Boutique Hotels embrace the boutique reception desk design trend....angular, minimal, geometric, sophisticated. Why would any gym brand create a design for a reception desk that was anything similar to these? Because their design team recommended they do.

Case Study This group of images was presented to us by a gym developer submitted as an inspiration board by another design firm. All the cliché's are here...the stone wall, the boutique lighting fixtures, minimalism, the cliché-cliché reception desk.

So, what does this say about his gym's brand?

How do you deliver this to a market and be the dominant player?

How do you prevent your competition from modeling this aesthetic if it’s available for all to copy?

simple.....Brand Don't Trend