This project was completed for the virtual coaching and fitness instructing brand, "Pheasyque." Pheasyque started as an Instagram page when Eugen Loki, fitness guru and artist, decided to use his illustration skills to better explain workouts and exercises. Today, the Pheasyque Instagram has over 700k followers and is expanding it's brand into new projects that will promote fitness knowledge through fun visual learning methods. I started with Pheasyque by creating a new brand foundation and website design, but over time, this project and brand continued to grow in complexity as we worked on creating a Pheasyque app concept, workout worksheets, strength training e-book, and text-book style "Fitness Bible."
In this project, I started with a complete rebranding of Pheasyque, including the logo, typography, color palette, and digital assets. The new brand articulates many of the attributes of the main illustrated character, "Pink Guy" - a figure drawn to showcases exercises and allow others to visualize their own body mechanics better. By incorporating visual styles associated with comic books, video games, and fitness culture, the brand adheres to expectations of a fitness brand while also distinguishing itself from others that have repeated and copied big brands like Nike. As Pheasyque had only existed as an Instagram page and a character design, there was great opportunity to expand the brand system to platforms beyond social media. Additionally, there continues to be opportunity with expanding the Pheasyque values of promoting fitness as fun, approachable, accessible, and inclusive to everyone, not just the serious gym-goers.
While working with the founder, I was able to help map out and define the other goals of Pheasyque like creating an extensive web platform, defining and refining virtual coaching offerings, and envisioning a unique fitness coaching app. After creating a new brand foundation, I worked to design a new web platform that would allow users to enroll in online coaching programs and access fitness information without needing to look at a social media page. The website design was structured around presenting the new brand, redesigned offerings, and future goals of Pheasyque like the app. The final design featured a home page, describing the Pheasyque story and goals, a programs page, illustrating how each offering works, and a library page, organizing posts and articles. While the site design will expand in the future to provide more unique experiences to members of Pheasyque programs, this design aimed to set a foundation for later additions when the startup holds a larger budget. While working on the site, I also was able to articulate the new online coaching offerings, what they included, how they were maintained, and how they helped people engage with the brand. Each offering is labeled as a "level" to reference the "gaming" associations of the brand, and the top two levels include designed materials for tracking fitness and nutrition goals with the help of an online coach.
The app concept was defined through creating an extensive app architecture, preliminary wire framing, and visual design experimentation. The app concept originated with Eugen's vision for creating a "clickable" Pheasyque character that a user could interact with and learn from. In the design concepts I created, the character can be rotated to view from different angles and customized to better reflect the appearance of the user themselves. The goal of the app will be to allow users to "see themselves" in the Pheasyque character without the distraction or disillusionment of trying to model off of other individuals with different bodies and capabilities. The concept I created illustrates the main function of being able to view the character from different angles, click on different muscle groups, and learn about specific exercises that work selected muscles. The full app architecture lays out how eventually a user will also be able to further customize their character, visualize progress through their character, and access more information through a library and/or a Pheasyque coach.
One of the most charming aspects of the Pheasyque brand is the motivation to provide many different mediums for learning about strength training and fitness while still maintaining a fun and interactive learning environment. The 50 page Pheasyque ebook, "STRONGER" was designed to provide tips and deeper knowledge about the bench press, squat, and deadlift exercises through a comic book-style layout of drawings. Designed to be viewed on a screen and printed out, the ebook uses drawings and diagrams to explain complicated physiology in an extremely approachable and fun layout. Released in May 2022, the ebook has already sold over 200 copies on the new website and continues to gain traction. The next step for Pheasyque is the creation of the "Fitness Bible" - a 600+ page printed textbook covering topics from hypertrophy and pain science to proper form and technique of exercises. This book is currently being designed and will likely release in 2023.
