Slack Tide Bathhouse
Design study for a sauna and cold plunge, where the page cools down as you scroll.
A design study. Slack Tide Bathhouse is a made-up business, so the copy, prices and details are invented to show how the design works.
Overview
Project overview
A made-up public bathhouse with saunas, cold plunges and a quiet room. The page starts in sauna amber and ends in plunge blue, and a small thermometer reads the temperature of whichever part of the visit you're reading about.
Approach
How I approached it
This is a design study for a bathhouse I made up. Saunas and cold plunges are new to a lot of people, and the first question is usually what actually happens during a session. So the page is built like the session: it starts hot and ends cold.
The background runs from sauna amber through a gray-green rest in the middle down to plunge blue, and a small thermometer on the side reads the temperature of the part of the visit you’re reading about. The circuit is drawn as a loop, because that’s how a session works: heat, cold, rest, then again.
The headline just states the two numbers. The type is a wide, rounded face in lowercase, and there are no photos of people meditating, which most wellness sites use.
What was delivered
Deliverables
- A headline that states the two temperatures and a plain description of a 90-minute session
- The hot, cold and rest circuit drawn as a loop, with how long to spend in each
- Sessions and prices in one short list, including the private sauna and the membership
- A first-visit section that answers what to bring, when to arrive and who should check with a doctor first
- A booking form that totals the price for the group
Key decisions
- The background runs from amber to gray-green to deep blue, so the page itself goes from the sauna to the plunge
- A thermometer on the side of the page that reads 190 degrees at the top and 50 at the bottom
- A wide, rounded typeface in lowercase, and no photos of people