Platinum Graphics, Illustration and Visual Communication Design · 2022
Better Bodies Hi Brand Identity
by Takahiro Eto
- A' Design Award 2022 Platinum Winner in Graphics, Illustration and Visual Communication Design
- Awarded April 15, 2022
- CLIENT: Better Bodies Hi
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 2,628,502
- Verification code F836DC5FEF · Verify this award
About Better Bodies Hi Brand Identity
Better Bodies Hi is a brand identity for a workout studio. The identity is based on a typeface that transforms in three stages. As visitors move from the reception to the workout area, the lettering on the signs becomes thicker and larger. The thinnest style is used sparingly at the reception to create a calm atmosphere. The boldest style is used in the workout area at a height of more than one meter. The typeface is applied to the logo, the website, signage and printed items. The changing lettering helps users prepare the body and mind for exercise step by step.
Takahiro Eto's Better Bodies Hi Brand Identity represents a distinguished achievement in environmental graphic design that elevates the discipline of spatial branding to architectural significance. This installation participates in the rich tradition of monumental typography that emerged from twentieth-century modernist movements, particularly the Swiss International Style's emphasis on systematic clarity and the bold environmental applications pioneered by practitioners who recognized that letterforms could structure spatial experience as powerfully as walls and columns. The designer demonstrates exceptional command of scale relationships, deploying typography at dimensions that transform informational signage into immersive environmental experience—visitors do not merely read the space but inhabit it through the very act of perceiving and mentally reconstructing fragmentary letterforms distributed across successive vertical planes. The chromatic decision to restrict the palette to pure white against absolute black achieves maximum visual impact while maintaining the functional clarity essential to wayfinding; this restraint speaks to a sophisticated understanding that powerful design often emerges from disciplined limitation rather than elaborate complexity. Technical execution reveals meticulous attention to edge precision, material selection, and the calibration of viewing distances that ensure legibility from multiple spatial positions while preserving graphic drama. The thematic content celebrates physical culture and the dedicated spaces where individuals pursue bodily excellence, transforming a utilitarian environment into a branded experience that reinforces identity through every visual encounter. The work invites contemplation of how contemporary design practice navigates the intersection of communication, architecture, and experiential branding—how might environments increasingly function as three-dimensional extensions of visual identity systems, and what responsibilities accompany the power to shape how people move through and perceive the spaces they inhabit?
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- Better Bodies Hi is a workout studio. They needed to create an environment where users after work could gradually prepare their body and mind towards exercise. Therefore, they designed a typeface that transforms in three stages. As users move from the reception to the workout area, the typeface of the sign gradually changes to a thicker and larger. The typeface gradually guides and encourages the user to work out. They used this typeface in logo, website, and products, to create a brand identity.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- This specialized typefaces has been used for everything from small application icons to institutional signage up to 1045mm in height. It has also been displayed in a variety of ways, from printed materials to digital signage, cutting sheets, and acrylic.
- Tags
- Brand Identity, Branding, Visual Identity, Logo, Signage, Typeface, Experience
- Production Technology
- A typeface that transforms in three stages was developed for this project. As that typeface gradually gets thicker, the diagonal lines increase, giving it a more lively look. In the reception area, the thinnest typeface is used sparingly to create a relaxed atmosphere. In the workout area, the boldest typeface is used at a size of more than one meter to encourage users. The use of different typefaces depending on the user's situation contributes to the quality of the user's experience.
- Design Challenge
- In Japan, advertisements for gyms often use pictures of very fit Westerners. Of course, Japanese do not become Westerners as a result of workout. BETTER BODIES HI conveys the message that you can improve your body and your life by making incremental changes to your current self. Therefore, They have visualized the "change". The difficulty was in managing the three different typefaces. They designed guidelines and format data so that the client could operate the typeface themselves.
- Project Duration
- The project started in November 2018 and opened in Aoyama, Tokyo in March 2020.
- Operation Flow
- It is impossible for a user who has just returned from working in an office to start training hard right away. It is necessary to gradually prepare the body and mind. For this reason, the sign at the reception desk is small and modest. The locker sign is a little larger. Signs in the workout area are very large. By changing the signs according to the user's situation, the user can gradually become more prepared.
- Inspiration
- Normally, the weight of a typeface changes, but its skeleton does not change significantly. For a long time, I have been wondering if it is possible to create a typeface whose skeleton also changes when its weight changes. Also, in general signage projects, the typeface used is limited in order to give a sense of unity to the space, but I was wondering if it would be possible to change the typeface to match the function of the space. These two ideas became the inspiration for this design.