Between family reunion dinners, traditional temple visits, open houses and gambling sessions, it’s been an eventful week, but I told myself no excuses. Since I was scarce on time, I had to cut the fluff and improvise more. The result? 7x more engagement in comparison to my earlier posts and I could identify that the crowd are fitness enthusiasts. Either way, I’m glad my posts aren’t only engaged by OnlyFans chatbots lol. That being said, I think I’m on the right track.

Based on that video, ‘the 'right track’ looks like:
- a question hook (curiousity)
- honest/authentic speech (story)
- comparing what I used to do vs what I do now (before vs after, results)
- relating the topic (fitness) into a something unexpected (design)

I’ve definitely seen similar techniques on social media, but it feels promising to find my own way through deconstructed formulas. I think a unique tone will do better than having it blend in with the masses. This also relates to my visual experiments on fitbydesign. Most fitness brands I’ve seen have a well-built, happy-smiling, protein-drinking, dumbbell-moving, thumbs-up-lifting tone to their brand. There’s more to fitness than that and it’s made me wonder why it’s often marketed this way.

Through this train of thought, I was reminded of a TEDTalk by Derek Thompson with a powerful concept abbreviated as MAYA: Most Advanced, Yet Acceptable. It’s used to describe the juxtaposition of neophilia (love for the new) and neophobia (fear of too new). ”To sell something familiar, you have to make it surprising; to sell something surprising, you have to make it familiar.“ Bars.

Needless to say, it added fuel for inspiration and so, I’ve been playing around with some storyboards with the objective to make the fitness journey more engaging and relatable through design. Somewhere along the lines, I decided to shorten the fitbydesign to fibyde and came up with a fun little shape to use as a placeholder. I’ll need time to get used to ‘Fibyde’ or try something else. Either way, there’s definitely room for improvements. Check it out:

Artboards for fibyde (fitbydesign), lightly inspired by sports team graphics