STAY GOLD
Our own gym, and our longest-running experiment. It started as a pet project for the studio: a branding system brought to life, an ecosystem of brand beliefs, culture and commerce.
Today it's two Toronto locations, Business of Strength Gym of the Year 2025-26, and a brand that's been plugged into AI. The brand site now sets the voice for every message the gym's AI writes, from win-back texts to campaign copy. The look built the community. The system keeps it talking.
Brand identity · Campaigns · Merch · Brand hub · AI voice system
The brand lives in one place. The AI reads it.
The Stay Gold brand book is a working site, not a PDF. Colour, type, voice, banned phrases and templates all live there as rules a machine can read. The gym's AI writes from it. The team builds posts and posters from it without waiting on a designer. One source, everything on brand.
The Stay Gold brand book is a working site, not a PDF. Colour, type, voice, banned phrases and templates all live there as rules a machine can read. The gym's AI writes from it. The team builds posts and posters from it without waiting on a designer. One source, everything on brand.
Voice. What we say and what we never say. The AI writes from this list.
Colour. Gold is earned. One exact value, one rule: 70% white, 25% black, 5% gold.
Type. One family. Rubik.
Post builder. Coaches make on-brand posts without a designer.
Poster studio. Seven templates. Download for social or print.
Brand in the wild
Real photos from our own gym, two approved marks, one art-director brief. An LLM looks at each photo and decides where a real gym owner would actually put the mark: the plywood panel, the bumper plate, the wall by the bell. Then the image model paints it in. Nothing invented from scratch, nothing on a person, never the solid logo.
Real photos from our own gym, two approved marks, one art-director brief. An LLM looks at each photo and decides where a real gym owner would actually put the mark: the plywood panel, the bumper plate, the wall by the bell. Then the image model paints it in. Nothing invented from scratch, nothing on a person, never the solid logo.
How it was made
A node graph in Figma Weave. The brief, the marks, the gold and the gym photos go in on the left. The LLM writes one precise edit per photo, and Nano Banana Pro does the retouching. The brief is the brand guideline, made executable. The rules are what keep it from looking like AI.
A node graph in Figma Weave. The brief, the marks, the gold and the gym photos go in on the left. The LLM writes one precise edit per photo, and Nano Banana Pro does the retouching. The brief is the brand guideline, made executable. The rules are what keep it from looking like AI.
Then it moves
The wall-ball frame went into ComfyUI and Wan 2.2, an open image-to-video model, with a slow push-in on the wordmark. Two models in relay: one blocks out the motion, the other sharpens the detail. Four seconds, first take.
The wall-ball frame went into ComfyUI and Wan 2.2, an open image-to-video model, with a slow push-in on the wordmark. Two models in relay: one blocks out the motion, the other sharpens the detail. Four seconds, first take.
Founded on a beautiful yet soul wrenching Robert Frost poem. And if any of you remember how Johnnie told it to Pony Boy in that pivotal scene from The Outsiders...you’ll know what we mean.
What we did is what we are always advising our clients to do. Create a brand that surrounds you. The ethos. The atmosphere and the culture. A branding system that is more than just paint on a wall. That has greater meaning, depth and an almost experiential engagement. Branding at every touchpoint that is meaningful, engaging and creates emotion through the power of design.
The clothing line was equally as successful as the gym itself. Oh yeah, forgot to say. Stay Gold is a gym. It is a collective of client-owners who all believe in the community power and exaltation of the human spirit through training, athleticism and personal expansion.
See below the numerous and evolving, always-on commuication patterns. A vibrant and magnetic brand has multitudes of ways to express itself. It creates community, interaction and a two-way dialogue among its members while it offers support and an unwavering message. Stay Gold. Despite what Robert Frost had to say. We know we can do it. Together.
