Brandbook for the services sector: beauty salons and fitness clubs

Photostyle: documenting the result, not advertising

Most articles about brandbooks describe photostyle as a set of beautiful images for social media. For the beauty and fitness industry, this is a mistake. 'Before and after' shooting is a brand's evidentiary base, and it should be treated like in medicine: with a protocol, not with a creative impulse from the photographer.

The difference between an advertising and a documenting approach is fundamental:

If these rules are not in the brandbook, every master and every administrator shoots 'by eye' — and the salon's results look like photos from different establishments. Portrait shots of staff follow the same principles: a unified background, dress code in frame, neutral emotion without an artificial smile 'for advertising'.

Tone of Voice: three scales instead of vague adjectives

Writing in a brandbook 'we are friendly and professional' is useless, because that's what every second brand in the industry writes. A working Tone of Voice is built on specific scales, between the poles where the brand occupies a fixed point:

• Expert — novice. How deeply the brand speaks about methods and terminology, or explains everything as simply as possible.
• Warm — cold. Degree of emotional proximity to the client, appropriateness of humor and personal addresses.
• Simple — complex. Length of phrases, presence of professional jargon, structure of messages.

The difference in positioning is evident in practice: Anytime Fitness chooses the point of view of a 'warm expert talking to a busy woman' — short supportive phrases, minimum pressure. Equinox works on the opposite logic — a luxurious, aspirational tone where restraint is more important than warmth. Both approaches are viable, but you can't confuse them for one brand.

ToV should be written not in a separate file, but within the 'Brand Platform' section with a direct link to the media guidelines section — the same place where examples of phrases for reception administrators, chat-bot scripts, and post templates are described. Without tying it to specific contact points, the brand voice remains a beautiful declaration that nobody applies.

Gym navigation: a system, not a set of signs

A fitness club is a rare case where one brand physically exists in 8–10 different zones, each with a distinct task, and the brandbook must describe the navigation logic as a system, not a list of individual signs.

The key mistake of chains is to make navigation 'by the designer's taste' for each new location. The brandbook fixes not only the appearance of the sign, but also the logic of the route: the client must move from the entrance to the changing rooms and then to the hall using the same visual language in any club of the network.

Staff appearance as part of the visual identity

The trainer, master, or administrator's uniform works as a brand carrier exactly when it is included in the brandbook under the same conditions as the logo on a business card — with the fabric color specified in HEX equivalent, the placement of the logo patch, and acceptable variations (t-shirt/polo/hoodie) for different club zones. In beauty salons, the master's uniform additionally solves a practical task: it must not interfere with the procedure and at the same time unambiguously identify the employee among clients in the waiting area. Without clearly defined rules, the uniform becomes something that is convenient to buy in a specific store — and the network loses visual unity faster than from an incorrect logo on the signage.

Franchise versus a single salon: the difference is not in scale, but in responsibility

A single salon can manage with a compact brandbook where the rules are applied by whoever wrote them. A franchise is a completely different story: the document must work without the author, in the hands of a contractor who has never seen the brand studio.

Without an extended brandbook version, each franchise point risks looking like an independent local business rather than part of a network — and this undermines the main franchise advantage: trust built on recognizability.

What the document consists of in the end

A full brandbook for a beauty salon or fitness club covers seven blocks: the brand platform, logo, colors in all formats (HEX, RGB, CMYK, Pantone), typography with font size and line spacing for different media, photo style, guidelines for media — from business cards to signage — and ready-made templates. Industry specificity is not added as a separate section, but permeates each of the seven blocks: the photo style gets a 'before/after' shoot protocol, media guidelines get rules for staff appearance and navigation through zones, the brand platform gets a working Tone of Voice with specific scales. It is precisely in this combination of industry details within the standard structure that the difference between a formal document and a working tool lies.