Stay Gold .fit

Brand book ·

Nothing gold
can stay.
So we
come back
tomorrow.

The brand standards for Stay Gold. How we look, how we sound, and where to grab the right file in ten seconds flat.

Build a post →Get the right logoDownload the brand kit

For the team

Coaches and staff. Make posts, signs and merch that look and sound like us without waiting on a designer.

For vendors + partners

Printers, sign shops, merch, agencies, partners. Exact files, exact colours, no guessing.

For members

Two gyms, one standard. Here's what's behind the smiley.

2gyms, Brock and Dundas
8people in a class. One coach.
0regrets.
1923the year Frost wrote the poem

01 The story

The poem
isn't sad.
It's an
instruction.

Robert Frost wrote the law in 1923: nothing gold can stay. S.E. Hinton wrote the response in The Outsiders (1967): Ponyboy recites the poem, and Johnny Cade's last words back to him are "stay gold, Ponyboy."

The name takes Frost's line and argues with it. Yes, nothing gold can stay. Stay anyway. That's a gym. That's the whole business.

Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost, as painted on the gym wall

No after photo

You can't bank fitness. We don't sell the outcome, we sell the practice. There's only the next session.

On the block

Two neighbourhood gyms in the west end. Run club leaves Brock Tuesdays at 7. The community fridge is out front.

Premium basic

Barbells, coaches, a clock and people who come back. Nothing extra. Everything well made.

Footnote: Coppola filmed The Outsiders in 1983 with a cast that was nobody yet. Patrick Swayze, Tom Cruise, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, Matt Dillon, and Ralph Macchio as Johnny, a year before he learned to wax on. Turns out some gold does stay.

02 Who we are

People
first.
Athletes
second.

Everyone who walks in is a person before they're a client, and an athlete whether they believe it yet or not. Six words we run on. It's what we hire for, what we coach by, and what we expect from each other on the floor. We call them the Six H's.

03 Everyone

Everyone's
welcome.
We mean it.

You don't need to be fit to start, you don't need to look a certain way, and you never have to explain who you are.

Every body. Every goal.

Body positive doesn't mean pretending goals don't exist. Some people want more energy or to feel stronger. Some want to lose weight, some want a certain look, some want to gain size, and some never think about how they look at all. Every one of those is welcome, coached without judgment.

Every goal is welcome

    We never

      InBody scan

      Included, and completely opt-in. Body composition for members who want it in their goals. Skip it and nobody asks why. The results belong to the member.

      This is a safe space banner at Stay Gold

      Zero tolerance.

      Racist, homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic or discriminatory behaviour, in any way, will not be tolerated. It hangs on our wall, so it goes in this book. Zero tolerance means what it says: a coach steps in, every time.

      04 The method

      Built for
      the
      long game.

      Gold Standard is how we program. One job: make you stronger without breaking you, so you can keep training for decades.

      Coach-led squat at Brock

      Tempo

      3

      down

      1

      hold

      X

      explode

      1

      hold

      We write tempo as four digits: 31X1. X means explode, and explode is relative. It's whatever speed you can move the weight at that moment, so rep eight won't look like rep one, and that's fine.

      Time under tension is how long a muscle is actually working in a set. Slow the reps down and you get more stimulus with less weight on the bar. The slow lowering builds tendons and shows weak spots before they turn into injuries.

      "Slow on the way down. Slower. There."

      05 Logo system

      Wordmark
      first.
      Always.

      Reach for the wordmark by default. Use the smiley when space is tight or the wordmark is already on the page. Icons are punctuation, never the logo. Every mark is hand-drawn: use the files, never redraw or retype them. Tap a colour dot to preview it, then grab SVG or PNG.

      Icons

      Black-fill originals on white. White-fill inverts on gold or black. One per moment. Each comes as SVG and PNG.

      Clear space: ¼ of the logo's width, every side

      Clear space

      Leave space equal to a quarter of the logo's width on every side. Nothing gets inside it: no text, no edges, no other logos.

      Minimum size

      Which colour

      Black on light, white on dark, gold on black. Never gold on white, never white on gold. On photos, white or the filled wordmark.

      06 Class titles

      Every class
      has its own
      title art.

      Class names are drawn, not typed. Use the art in posts, schedules and signs. Each comes white on black and black on white.

      Masters live in the ClassNames folder in Drive.

      07 Colour

      Gold is
      earned.

      Black and white carry everything. Use gold like a medal: one gold thing per piece, where it means something. Tap any value to copy it.

      70% white
      25% black
      5%

      Pairings

      Adobe swatches (.ase)Colour values (.txt)

      08 Type

      One family.
      Rubik.

      Rubik is free with an open licence, fine for anything commercial. It's already on staygold.fit. In Google Docs it's under More fonts. In Canva, search Rubik. On your computer, install the files below.

      Download fonts (.zip)Rubik on Google Fonts ↗

      The guides get a serif

      Nutrition Unlocked

      Build a plate, bust a few myths, then unlock the recipes.

      The Unlocked guides use Fraunces for titles and Newsreader for reading. Rubik still runs every button. Guides only: never on ads, signage, social or the logo.

      Always

      Headlines in caps, ExtraBold, tight leading. Sentence case for body. Labels small, bold, tracked open. Body 12 pt minimum in print, 16 px on screen.

      Never

      Typing STAY GOLD in a font as a logo. Retyping class names. Script fonts, even for signatures. Wide-tracked headlines. Italic display type, outlines or drop shadows.

      For developers

      font-family: "Rubik", "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans-serif; --serif: "Fraunces", Georgia, serif; /* guides only */ --text: "Newsreader", Georgia, serif; /* guides only */

      00 Motion

      Unmotion.

      We move like a text editor. Two core moves, typing and hard cuts, plus blinks, waves, ripples, stretches and a set of hard-cut kinetic moves: repeat, erode, spread, scatter, corners and fragment. No sliding, no easing, no bounce, no effects. The cadence shows you how to read it. Tap any cell to replay. Double-tap one to send it to the post builder.

      Want one of these on your own photo, as a video? Make it in the post builder, pick the move, download the MP4.

      Cadence

      Type at 50 to 70 ms a letter. Cut words at 200 to 300 ms. Hold the last frame at least 1.5 seconds, long enough to read twice.

      One move per frame

      Type, cut or slide. Never stack them. Waves and ripples are for one line of type, never body copy.

      Read for impact

      The word that lands last gets the weight, so pause before it. “So we come back… tomorrow.” In video, cut on the beat.

      Not for everyone: the site respects your device's reduce-motion setting, and the Motion button in the corner turns it all off.

      09 Voice

      Blunt.
      Specific.
      Human.

      Short sentences. Numbers beat adjectives: "small groups" is a claim, "eight people" is a fact. We talk as "we" to "you". No em dashes. Sign off ~The Stay Gold team.

      We say

        We never say

          Voice checker

          Paste it before you post it.

          Captions, emails, signs. It flags words we don't use, em dashes and hype, and suggests the Stay Gold version.

            00 Phrasebook

            It's a gym.

            Lines we use, and lines we're trying out. Use it drops a line into the post builder and poster studio in one go.

            10 Logo lab

            Where's
            it going?

            Pick the job. You get the right mark, the right colour, the reason, and the file.

            11 Post builder

            Make
            the post.
            Keep it
            on brand.

            Upload your own photo or use one of ours, drop a logo on it, write a line. Keep it still for a photo, or make the words move and download a video. Everything stays inside Instagram's safe zones.

            Drag the photo to reposition.

            or pick one of ours. Shot at Stay Gold, credited and ready.

            Format
            Our photos
            Logo
            Colour
            Position
            Words

            Finish
            Words move

            Still saves a photo. Pick a move to make a video of the words animating over your photo.

            Post it

            On your phone, these open the app with your post ready to go. On a computer, we save the file, copy the caption and open the upload page. Still posts share as a photo, moving ones as a video.

            Tag the photographer and the location. Post faces only with people's OK.

            00 Poster studio

            Equal parts
            flyer and
            gallery.

            The unbrand. Plain type, exposed structure, everyday formats: a tear-off flyer, a dictionary entry, a receipt, a warning label, a list. Pick one, write anything, download it for social or print.

            Template
            Size
            Paper
            Headline
            Small print

            Lists, definitions and receipts read one line at a time. On the receipt, split each line with a | for the right-hand column.

            Ready-made. Tap one to open it.

            12 Photography

            Real people.
            Real work.

            Real members mid-work, real light, the room as it is. Every body, every age, every gender. Nobody posing for an after photo. Newest shoots first, credited to the people who made them.

            Do

            Faces mid-effort, laughing between sets, coaches coaching, chalk and sweat.

            Do

            Natural light, slight grain, black and white when colour gets noisy.

            Don't

            Before-and-afters, posed flexing for the camera, stock photos, filters.

            Always

            Credit the photographer. Ask before posting someone's face. Kids only with a parent's yes.

            13 Tee designer

            Make merch
            that looks
            like us.

            Pick a blank and an ink, then a mark, a slogan or your own words for the front and back. Sizes are in inches for your printer. Save the mockup when it's right.

            Shirt
            Ink
            Front
            Back

            Front and back side by side.

            Got a design you love?

            Send it in. It could be our next run.

            No promises and no order. We look at every design when we plan our next merch run, and if yours makes the cut, we'll be in touch. You get a copy too.

            Goes to hello@staygold.fit with your mockup and the print files.

            14 Tools

            The small
            stuff,
            done right.

            An email signature everyone shares, and QR codes that tell us which flyer actually worked.

            Email signature

            Paste into Gmail: Settings, Signature.

            Trackable QR code

            Tracking a specific spot? Name it (optional)

            Bold codes log the date and time of every scan in the Stay Gold QR Codes sheet. Every code carries utm tags, so visits also show up by flyer in Squarespace and Google Analytics. Leave the spot blank for the fattest code. Name a spot only if you want to compare one flyer against another.

            15 Rules

            Please don't.

            The marks are drawn by hand. They only work as drawn. If you're about to do any of these, use the original file instead.

            16 Downloads

            Everything,
            in one place.

            Every logo as SVG and PNG, the fonts, the colours, and the source folders. Use what's here, never a screenshot.

            The whole brand kit

            Every logo and icon (SVG + PNG at 512, 1024 and 2048 px), Rubik and the guide fonts, Adobe swatches, colour values and a one-page usage sheet.

            Brand kit (.zip) ↓Logos onlyFonts only

            Every file

            Source folders

            Contact