Strength with Purpose: Crafting the ActiveVirtue Brand
PROJECT Overview
ActiveVirtue is a purpose-driven gym where personal growth, accountability, and service take centre stage.
Founded by Heston Swallow, the gym goes beyond physical training, using fitness as a tool to build character, community, and a sense of shared purpose. Each year, ActiveVirtue launches a new campaign to unite members around collective challenges, reinforcing values and inspiring continual self-improvement.
SERVICES:
STRATEGY
BRAND IDENTITY
LOGO DESIGN
SOCIAL MEDIA
MERCH DESIGN
BACKGROUND
Heston’s vision for ActiveVirtue was to create a gym culture rooted in virtue, integrity, and service, not ego or aesthetics. He wanted a space where members train not just for themselves, but to become more reliable, honest, and service-oriented individuals. To achieve this, he sought a brand identity that could visually and verbally communicate the gym’s core principles while fostering community engagement through campaigns, merchandise, and storytelling.
THE CHALLENGE
The primary challenge was to design a brand identity system that could:
Reflect a gym culture grounded in values, personal growth, and collective achievement.
Appeal to an audience seeking purpose-driven fitness rather than superficial results.
Be versatile for digital platforms, physical campaigns, and unique branded materials such as comic books, challenge coins, and apparel.
Establish a visual and verbal language that could grow with the annual Virtue Campaign, reinforcing a culture of community and continual improvement.
Discovery & Strategy
The project began with a deep-dive strategy call where we unpacked Heston’s vision for ActiveVirtue, building a gym culture rooted in service, integrity, and community. From there, I created a series of mood boards to explore potential visual directions, balancing grit with grounded authenticity.
To further define the brand’s voice and personality, we conducted a word-mapping exercise that distilled ActiveVirtue’s core traits into five pillars: grounded, supportive, hopeful, gritty, and honest. This gave us a clear foundation for how the brand should look, sound, and feel across every touchpoint.
With the strategic groundwork in place, I moved into the sketching phase, developing early logo concepts and visual motifs that could embody the values of strength, unity, and continual growth. These sketches acted as the bridge between conceptual strategy and tangible design, setting the stage for refined logo development and campaign assets.
THE solution
Guided by the insights from our strategy work, the final identity was designed to reflect ActiveVirtue’s unique culture - one where strength serves a higher purpose. The word-mapping exercise and mood boards gave us clear direction: the brand needed to balance grit with hope, and community with individuality.
The resulting identity system brought these ideas to life through a versatile & responsive logo system, a grounded yet powerful colour palette, and typography that communicates both resilience and clarity. Custom graphic elements and language assets reinforced the gym’s personality, while campaign-focused graphics and merchandise applications extended the brand into physical and digital spaces.
All of these components were built into a comprehensive brand identity system, flexible enough to evolve with each annual campaign, yet consistent enough to anchor the ActiveVirtue brand for years to come. The system ensures that whether members encounter the gym on social media, through campaign materials, or inside the space itself, they experience the same message: strength, virtue, and community, united by design.
THE result
The new identity gave ActiveVirtue a strong, cohesive presence that resonated with purpose-driven gym members. Campaign launches were met with enthusiasm, engagement, and a sense of shared pride among the community. The visual and verbal system established a foundation for growth, making future campaigns and branded initiatives seamless to execute.
CONCLUSION
ActiveVirtue’s brand identity demonstrates how values-driven design can elevate a community, transform culture, and create meaningful connections. By combining visual grit, authentic storytelling, and campaign-focused assets, the gym now embodies its mission of building strength, character, and collective virtue.