Slow luxury, fast checkout.
Brand, website and booking system for a new yoga & pilates studio in Rotterdam
Role: Brand & Digital Designer · Year: 2026
Client: Moïshan, yoga & pilates studio, Rotterdam
Tools: Figma, Squarespace, Acuity → SportBit Manager
Deliverables: Brand strategy & guidelines · visual identity & design system · website (desktop + mobile) · member dashboard · booking and payment flow · copy & class descriptions · email & Instagram · legal pages
In short: When I started, Moïshan had a name and nothing else. I built its entire brand and digital foundation on my own, from positioning to a working booking and payment flow. This case follows the two decisions that mattered most: how I found the brand's position, and why the first booking system had to be rebuilt.
The challenge: create a studio brand that stands out in a crowded market, and a booking experience where choosing a class, pass or session and paying for it happens in one motion.
Finding a third position
I compared other studios in Rotterdam. They tend to fall into two visual camps: cool Japanese-zen minimalism, or the bold hard-sport look. Neither fit Moïshan's audience: design-conscious Rotterdammers who'd read the first as cold and the second as a gym. It had to feel like a brand you'd want to belong to.
So the brief became the gap between those camps: warm, grounded, premium, never loud. I shaped that into a positioning of slow luxury: calm as a form of luxury.
The test of a positioning is whether it survives real choices. My first accent palette leaned warm and earthy, terracotta and clay, but it pulled the brand toward a trend everyone was using that season. Warm, but not quiet. So I dropped it for a palette built on stillness instead of heat: linen and sand, a grounded sage green, deep forest for text, and a single butter yellow used sparingly. Green over orange locked the positioning in place. An editorial serif paired with a clean sans did the rest: considered on a poster, legible in a booking screen.
I captured it all in brand guidelines and a design system, with tokens, type scale, logo suite and components, so every touchpoint, from the website to the member dashboard, is built from the same foundation.
The booking system: why the first solution didn't hold
Before designing any screens, I defined three personas, each with their own user stories:
Drop-in (casual): wants to try a single class with no commitment and pay by card at checkout.
Community member (committed): wants a class pass or membership, with remaining credits visible and bookings self-service.
Personal coaching (focused): wants to book a private session from the coach's agenda and pay for a session or bundle online.
Different needs, but one requirement was non-negotiable across all three: booking and paying in a single motion. I defined that up front, which is exactly why I could see the first system fail.
Phase 1: Acuity. The logical choice: it integrated seamlessly with Squarespace and handled scheduling well. On paper, it worked.
What surfaced. Acuity couldn't process iDEAL, and in the Netherlands, iDEAL isn't optional, it's the default. Visitors who wanted to pay had to email for a payment link, an extra step at the exact moment you want them to check out. Worse, payment wasn't enforced at booking, so people reserved spots and paid later.
Phase 2: SportBit. The point wasn't that Acuity is bad, but that it didn't fit the market and the users I was designing for. Payment was the one need all three personas shared, and the one left unmet. So I moved to SportBit Manager, a Dutch platform with iDEAL, SEPA and card built in via MultiSafePay, plus native passes, memberships and waitlists. Every persona need that phase 1 dropped was finally covered.
The trade-off. SportBit is built for gyms and CrossFit, the exact world Moïshan was positioned against. I gave up some brand control in the booking step for a payment flow that works, and handled it by keeping that step contained: the brand carries the experience right up to payment and hands over only where it has to. A visitor who can't check out doesn't book.
Result
Moïshan opened with a complete brand, website and booking system. Customers can buy a trial pack, a class pass, a membership or a coaching session and pay in one flow, with every common payment method available, including iDEAL.
Just as important: by choosing a managed platform instead of building everything custom, the studio owner can run it all herself. Schedules, passes, memberships and payments are managed without needing a designer or developer for every change.
What I took away
Building brand and infrastructure alone taught me where the two meet, and where they pull against each other. A positioning is easy to write and hard to protect once real constraints enter the room. And a system choice only proves itself the moment someone tries to pay. Doing the persona work up front gave me a standard to hold every decision against, so when the first system fell short, I knew exactly what was wrong, and why.
Ongoing
This project is still ongoing
Social media post
The website sells the classes, but Instagram is where people first meet the brand. So I kept the feed built on the same foundation: the olive and linen palette, the editorial serif, and a calm, grounded tone.
Before opening, teaser posts like "Zoom in for a sign" built curiosity without giving everything away. Since then, the feed mixes class explainers, event invitations, words from members and small mindset moments, like "Things you can choose this week." Different content, but always recognisable as Moïshan: quiet, warm and never loud.
