ZENKAI
A strength training app that turns the sets you actually lift into stats, levels and ranks. Identity, design system, illustrations, programming engine and store listing: all out of the same workshop.
The project
A coach's program, an RPG's progression.
Fifty questions up front, and a plan that belongs to no one else: your goal, your available days, your equipment, your old injuries, your real strength. The engine turns that into a full block, session by session, set by set, down to the load on the bar and the rest between two. No more Monday nights spent standing at the rack wondering where to start.
On top of it, the world that goes with it: deep black, electric lime, manga inking and phonk energy. The register of gym edits and the grind, not the pastel of wellness apps. An app you open between two sets and want to show off.
And underneath the finish, one rule: every stat is computed from the sets actually logged, and the formula is readable inside the app. That's what separates progression you earn from set dressing that lights itself up.
The promise
Your stats only go up because your lifts go up.
The identity
A lime that explodes on black, and nothing else.
The icon tells a single scene: a bar snapping clean in the middle, broken by a force it couldn't hold. Thick manga inking, shards at the break, a diagonal hatch behind, and a lime borrowed from gym edits. No decorative gradient, no third color.
The rest of the interface sits on near pure black. The accent stays rare, one dominant element per screen: the button that starts the session, or the number that matters. When everything glows, nothing does.
Palette
Typography
The engine
A calculated program, not a workout drawn at random.
Onboarding collects twenty-four usable variables: goal, level, available equipment, weekdays, injuries, sleep, starting strength. The engine turns them into a full eight to twelve week block, with its phases, deloads, starting loads and week by week progression. The user never has to pick what to do.
It's all deterministic and computed on device, with no network call and no AI on the critical path. Same profile, same plan, testable in a console against nine reference profiles. And a gym with no signal never costs a session.
The store screenshot set: one promise on top, the screen right under it, a single accent per visual.
The game layer
The level keeps what's done, the rank says what you're worth.
Two counters, two jobs. The level never drops, it adds up every bit of work done since the first session. The rank goes up and down, from E to ONI, because it describes present shape. Splitting them means being demanding without ever erasing what someone built.
No experience for opening the app, no login bonus, no made up quests. The weekly objectives are exactly the ones the engine had already calculated, simply dressed in game language.
questions to calibrate the plan
exercises in the starting library
stats computed from logged sets
ranks to climb, from E to ONI
The illustrations
Three families of drawings, one single grammar.
Manga inking for objects and moments, fine line isometry for the onboarding sets, silhouettes for the exercises. Two values only, the shape and the accent: the drawings read from the palette and follow the dark or light theme without ever being redrawn.
Onboarding
Four sets for a single question.
Where will you train? Full gym, dumbbells at home, nothing at all, or a calisthenics park. The answer drives the entire exercise selection, so it deserved better than a list: four isometric scenes, same scale, same line, the chosen one turns lime.
The exercises: same character, same scale, starting position, inked hatching instead of gradients.
The little photography that enters the brand goes black and white and halftoned, so it never competes with the lime.
The scope
- Identity and icon
- Dark and light design system
- iOS and Android app
- Programming engine
- Illustrations and pictograms
- Onboarding and paywall
- Store listing and screenshots
- Art direction and copy
Version one
A first version that stands on its own, and a road already drawn.
Version one ships with a complete base rather than a catalogue: around a hundred and twenty exercises, picked to cover every movement pattern and every equipment level, from a full gym to a living room with nothing in it. A short library where each entry is illustrated, described and properly flagged for contraindications beats a two thousand line directory nobody proofread.
What comes next is written, and the engine was built to take it: the library doubles, circuits, supersets and isometric work enter the session, and combat training arrives with what it needs, heavy bag, rounds and striking work. Each addition is a new way to fill a slot the engine already knows how to compute.
After version one
- Exercise library doubled, illustrations included
- Circuits and complexes
- Supersets and antagonist pairs
- Isometric work and timed holds
- Combat sport training, rounds and heavy bag
- Block regeneration from the loads actually lifted
Launch
The app is live on the App Store. Google Play is next.
“Your stats only go up because your lifts go up.”
ZENKAI · Promise
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