InshapeBody Typeface

Starting the Gym… from Next Saturday!

We’ve all heard this phrase before—either from ourselves or from people around us. Besides all the self-invented excuses we can come up with to justify it, things like vulnerability to injuries, lack of knowledge about proper workouts, and pain from old-school training methods often make people give up on exercising altogether.

That’s where InShapeBody comes in as a different kind of option. By offering modern, low-risk, and science-backed workouts, it not only delivers results in a shorter time but also helps with muscle relaxation.

For our design team, working on this brand was particularly intriguing and somewhat unfamiliar, as its services and equipment differed from conventional gyms. So, we decided to visit one of InShapeBody’s branches  to get a better understanding of their services. The first thing that caught our attention was the large amount of text and the lack of consistency in fonts, which didn’t quite match the sporty vibe. On the bright side, the friendly atmosphere, excitement, and presence of professional trainers were definite plus points.

Beyond the physical space, the font choices for social media were also kind of… offside by about 50 meters! To be fair, finding an Arabic font that truly captures the essence of the sports genre isn’t easy.

From a technical perspective, we needed two main styles:

- A text font for longer passages—Regular and Bold weights

- A display font for emphasis and grabbing attention—Light, Black, and ExtraBlack weights

After loads of brainstorming and bouncing around keywords like modern, professional, and cutting-edge, we kicked off the design process with the display style in ExtraBlack weight.

We focused on words and phrases frequently used in the brand’s communication, like InShapeBody packages, muscle-building machines, fat burning, bodybuilding, yoga, specialists, academy, and Niavaran branch.

The slant of the font was a key feature to reinforce a sense of movement and energy. But for the text style, we opted for a more upright and formal structure.

Some design details worth mentioning: Tall letterforms in the x-height range. Thickness variations within each character mimic muscle fibers. Smooth, muscular curves in certain letters, along with carefully structured joints in characters like و، ح، ع، ه، ی, keep them "lean" and free from unnecessary bulk—just like precision in athletic movements.

The InShapeBody typeface was created by Reza Bakhtiarifard and Mahdi Ershadi after a lot of back-and-forth refinements in 2024. Hossein Raouf was part of the team during the research phase. If you’re interested in getting this font, well… it’s not for sale! 😏