For the last 8 years, my go-to work, church, and lifting shoes have been some variation of white Adidas sneakers. I replace them once a year because I have to: I take close to a million steps a year in those shoes. I didn’t do this intentionally, but those white Adidas have become core to the Braden East “brand.” Whether I chose it or not was irrelevant, white sneakers are now a part of how many people recognize me. Here’s the lesson I learned from this: Anything you say or do repeatedly will eventually become part of your brand. Once you understand this, you get to influence what your brand looks like, by choosing a message, choosing how you want to say it, and repeating it over time. Do anything consistently for 8 years, and I promise it will become part of your brand.

Having visuals and event graphics is great, but not just because those things make it easier to do promotion. The ultimate goal of an event brand is to make the experience “sticky” and memorable. To maximize that memorability, you’ll want to approach different types of events differently. There are tons of ways to categorize church events, but the one that matters for design and branding is timing. That said, here are the three different types of events (by timing) and how you can approach branding for each. Series Ongoing regular events in the life of your church that happen with a faster cadence (e.g. monthly or quarterly). For these, a new set of visuals for every event would almost definitely be overkill. However, there’s an opportunity for creativity. Instead of branding each event, consider giving the series a brand that persists throughout the year. If you need some variation to distinguish these regular events from one another, change something minor like a background color or a photo for each occurrence, keeping the design the same. Annual Annual events offer more flexibility and room to experiment with the unique event visuals. A lot of churches will approach annual events with an entirely new set of visuals each year, which is totally fine! As long as certain things about the event are consistent year to year, it can even become a beloved part of your church’s overall brand. Here’s what should stay the same for that to work: The event name Who the event is for What happens at the event (although there’s room to adjust this as well) You can also choose to treat Annual events in a similar way to Series events, keeping the core visuals the same and making minor tweaks. One-Off Do whatever feels right! One-Off events are an opportunity to go wild, but they’re also a chance to rely on the branding you use for everything else. If it’s an event you might eventually turn into a regular thing, then consider designing something simple to make it easier for people to remember. The goal of all event branding is to be memorable. If you don’t remember an event, it probably didn’t have an impact.

Designers use color ratios to help us create aesthetically pleasing designs. After nearly a decade of graphic design, I can go with my gut when balancing colors. But when all is said and done, it almost always works out to some version of the 70-20-10 ratio. 70 If you have a brand color palette, pick a more neutral color that is either very light or very dark. If you don’t have a color like that in the palette, just use white or black. This is your 70% color, and it should be the background color on the whole site. 20 Your 20% color should be a contrasting color to the 70%. So if your 70% color is white, your 20% color should be black or dark grey. Use this color for body text and some section backgrounds. 10 Finally, the 10% left should be a “pop” color. This is usually your main brand color. Use the 10% color on buttons, or smaller elements that need some attention.

Got a website for your church but it’s missing that extra-clean, professional look? I’ve got four tips for you today that are guaranteed to make it better. If you do these things, your web visitors will have an easier time finding what they’re looking for and you’ll have more people walking through your church’s digital front door. 1. Be Selective with Content The more different pieces of content there are on your site, the less likely visitors are to read any of it. Reduce the amount of information you’re presenting and cut any text that isn’t absolutely necessary. Pro tip: write as if you’re explaining your church to a total stranger at a 4th grade reading level. Here are a few practical ways to slice and dice: Headings should be between 1-10 words Paragraphs should be less than 50 words Use bulleted lists instead of sentences with commas 2. Increase Font Sizes If your content has been distilled to follow the word counts above, you’ll be able to bump up the size of your headings and body copy. This makes the site easier to skim, and helps older readers who might struggle with small text. I recommend 20-25px for body text, and 48-72px for your largest heading. 3. Provide a Clear Call to Action If someone happens to land on your website, you want to give them a clear next step, just like you would for a visitor who to your church on Sunday morning. Whether that’s filling out a digital connection card or watching your service livestream, make sure that there is a stand-out action someone can take, and that each button says exactly what it does. Pro tip: Avoid links and buttons that say like “Learn More” or “Click Here.” Instead, use labels that are specific and tell the user what to expect when they click that particular button. 4. Prioritize Menu Items Just like cutting down text, you also want to reduce the number of options you’re presenting to visitors. I’m working on a website refresh right now with an organization whose old website had FIFTY FIVE different links in the main menu. The decision paralysis and brainpower it takes to find what you’re looking for can get overwhelming very fast. Try to limit your main menu to 5 options or less. You can always link to additional pages from one of those main pages, but this approach keeps everything organized and easy to navigate.

Building a brand isn’t as hard as you might think. When you boil it down, all you have do is decide what you want to be known for and work backwards from there. If you’re in ministry, you already have a “why,” but your core message (“what”) is the first building block. To turn that core message into a brand, you need two more ingredients: A communication plan (“how”), and consistent repetition. Distilled into three steps: Choose what you want to say Choose how you want to say it Say it over and over again in different ways Summed up in a formula: Brand = Message + Delivery + Repetition

I recently had the privilege of meeting Dr. Michael Reeves, Author, Professor, and President at the Union School of Theology in the UK. He had just finished speaking at an event, and I knew I had to ask him for any encouragement or advice he could give to you lovely people in the Tend Your Brand family. He was gracious enough to think my question over and offered an amazing reply. Here’s what he said: Braden: What advice or encouragement can you give to church leaders who are trying to better communicate their vision and galvanize their congregations? Dr. Reeves: I’m reminded of what Jesus said, “Out of the heart the mouth speaks.” If you don’t believe in your vision, your congregation won’t believe in it either. If you’re bored with your message, the people you speak to will sense that lack of conviction. Seek God’s guidance sincerely and ask him for the conviction and resolve to preach your message with full-throated zeal. So there you go. I don’t feel like I can say it any better than he did, so I’ll leave it there. Hopefully his wisdom was encouraging and re-centering for you. P.S. It felt too much like paparazzi at the time, so I didn’t get a photo with him (maybe I should have anyway - ha!).

Where is the line between taking inspiration and being a copycat? There’s a legal answer, but that’s not always helpful when it comes to doing something original. I’ll briefly mention trademark infringements with a recent example from the corporate world, but then I’ll come back to the simple, common sense principle I follow to avoid unintended likenesses. The Legal Threshold According to US copyright law, changing 25% of an original work is enough to avoid infringement… most of the time. There are cases like this Bucc-ees lawsuit where some changes and tweaks aren’t enough. But if I had to guess, you’re probably not interested in toeing the line and copying as much as possible from other organizations without getting in trouble. You probably want to know, “How do I extract the best ideas from someone else’s branding, without letting it influence ours too much?” The Common Sense Answer Take inspiration from more than one place. It sounds simple, but this is really all there is to it. This is the approach I use when designing anything: Gather inspiration from at least five different sources. List the features of each that stand out as relevant to the project Start creating and see how those features interact Take inspiration from more than one source, and you’ll never have to worry about copying someone else.

Advertisers are always looking for a way to get you to buy a product. To do that, sometimes they’ll parody or copy each other to make their message more memorable. It’s amazing how well this strategy works, but does it have a place in church branding? No. Copying another church’s messaging, branding, or marketing might look nice. It might even get more traction at first. In the long run, this approach is deadly. The first reason is that you could open yourself up to legal action. Many churches trademark their branding, which means you can easily break the law if you’re directly copying their image. Even if you don’t get sued, there’s a second and even worse outcome. Many people already think of churches (especially in heavily churched areas) like desperate credit card companies: always offering new incentives for people to switch churches. I’ve heard it called “sheep stealing,” “member trading,” and “transfer growth.” While it’s not always the intention of the leaders at one church to steal sheep, it would be wrong to encourage “church hopping” for such superficial reasons as slick branding. The solution Build your church brand around your unique story and vision. It’s that simple. But wait, is it ever okay to copy? Where is the line between taking inspiration and being a copycat? That’s what I’ll cover tomorrow.

This topic is one that goes wide and deep, so I’m going to try and give a 30,000ft snapshot. A church’s identity is made up of the themes and threads from its unique past, present, and future - things which make that church distinct from the church down the road. Visual identity is the symbolic representation of that, which is why it goes so much deeper than a logo or carpet color. Turning a church identity into something visual is a tricky process, but not impossible. Here’s my thesis: Starting with your intangible identity is the only way to create a meaningful, long-lasting, and copycat-proof brand. Let’s say you hire a graphic designer to create a beautiful visual identity that’s based on your preferences and current design trends. What happens in two years when those preferences and trends have changed? By going deep on your church’s intangible identity, you can emerge from the woods with a look that actually captures the uniqueness of your church and lasts for decades. Your visual identity won’t be able to be copied or replicated, because it’s grounded in the stuff that makes your local church, "local". Otherwise, you’re probably just copying someone else.

I see too many churches missing chances for continued visitor engagement. Does this sound familiar? “Thanks for attending, follow us on Facebook for announcements!” Giving people a link to your social media page isn’t bad, but there is a much better way to encourage visitors to continue engaging with your church. Most people are coming to church with the intention of getting something deeper than what they can get online. So give them that! Instead of asking something of them, offer them something that they would be crazy to say no to. Here are the three easy and effective ways to do that: 1. Next Steps After What They Just Got This is an easy one. Offer visitors the next thing that follows from how they just engaged. Why? If they came for a worship conference or at a summer camp, the next steps are going to be activities like discipleship, Bible studies, and community. If they experienced the power of the gospel and God’s people at the event, they’re going to naturally want this. And, if you’re like most churches, these are all programs that your church already offers! 2. More of the Same Thing Offer visitors more of the same thing they just experienced. This is helpful in circumstances where the engagement is something your church participates in on a regular basis. If you have a weekly cadence of a Wednesday night Bible study for Sunday morning worship, and a visitor attends for that particular event, offer them an easy way to continue to come. This offer should somehow make attending next week even easier. 3. Something Similar But Better This one is pretty self explanatory. If a visitor is attending a Wednesday night community bible study, offer them a small group of people in your church where they’ll go deeper and get to study over a longer period of time with people they know. If someone visits a Sunday morning worship service, offer them Wednesday night worship or a prayer meeting. Following these three strategies will help you guide visitors along the journey of engaging and identifying with your church, so that they can ultimately join.