Limitation breeds creativity. Ask any artist or creative person, and they’ll tell you that their proudest moments are when they’ve solved a problem with restrictions, limitations, or pressure. Whether it’s limited time, resources, space, color, etc. those boundaries become a unique seed in which creativity grows and blossoms. This applies to new projects and ongoing brand work (aka tending your brand). Here’s the point: Don’t be afraid to put limitations in place. Committing to a deadline, color palette, or style is actually one of the best things you can do for your brand.

For creative decision-making, I’m a huge fan of the 3-person team/committee. But why? Proverbs tells us that in an abundance of counselors there is safety, so what could go wrong with a large committee? This is actually a serious mistake I’ve seen organizations fall prey to when it comes to creative-heavy projects like a rebrand. Here are a few of the downsides to a large team: Decision paralysis Studies show that the larger the decision-making group, the more individual members fear making the wrong decision. When no single person has authority, consensus is hard hard to reach and people feel overwhelmed by the consequences of the choice. Scheduling problems The obvious and most painful part of setting up a church branding team is finding a time when everyone is available to meet. Above a team size of 3 or 4, you can expect to add a week of lead time per extra person to every major decision throughout the project. Conflicting preferences Believe it or not, you actually want your church rebrand team to all have similar (but not identical) design taste. Mixing a few complimentary perspectives can have interesting and pleasing results. Involving too many people in the creative process is like mixing too many colors of paint. The result either won’t look unified (think Picasso) or it will be boring and generic (think brown sludge).

There’s a time for everything: A time to change your brand and a time to double down, A time to whisper with your logo and a time to shout, A time to plant seeds of your vision and a time to water them, A time to honor your heritage and a time to distance yourself from the past, A time to speak to your congregation and a time to speak to your community, A time to be bold and a time to be subtle, A time to plan communications and a time to wing it, A time to seek design help and a time to do it yourself, A time to repeat yourself and a time to say something new. Consider the times as you tend your brand!

A church rebrand can be a lot like cleaning the house: You know you need to do it, but it always takes longer than you thought. There’s not an exact number of weeks or months, but I’ve noticed some patterns that can give you a ballpark idea for how long a church rebrand takes. Here’s the formula: 12 Months or Hard Deadline / Designer Availability (1-4) + 1 week per committee member Hard Deadline This formula is part of why I encourage pastors to set a hard deadline for the launch. Without one, it’s easy to keep making minor tweaks for months, with diminishing returns. Many churches I've worked with have chosen to announce the rebrand at an annual gathering or upcoming church event. This gives you less flexibility, but it’s a great way to keep your eyes on the prize and push through sticking points. Committee Size The larger the group, the harder it becomes to schedule meetings, commit to colors, and review designs. Decision paralysis is a documented phenomenon that is amplified by more inputs. Only adding 1 week per committee member may not be enough, but it’s close. Designer Availability Using an in-house designer is going to be the most flexible and fastest way to rebrand, hands down. With a larger agency, you may be one of dozens of clients and might not get the fastest turnaround. I personally only take on a couple of new clients per month so I can focus my attention on the project at hand, keeping it on track. Transition Time Smaller churches may not have much in the way of merch, letterhead, or building signage. They may or may not have a website. In the design world, we lump all these items into a category we call "brand collateral" or "collateral" for short. For larger churches, the transition may take longer because they have more collateral to update. Building signs can take weeks to get printed or manufactured, the website needs to be redesigned, and merch probably needs to be created.

A friend told me they have a saying in sales world, “Confused people never buy.” It’s a maxim to keep rookie salesmen from making the critical mistake of overloading their prospects with information.Instead of focusing on one or two unique benefits of the product, they’ll talk about all the little complex features. But this is actually counterproductive. Seasoned salesmen know that people buy when they have the most clarity around just one or two pieces of information. Here’s the question: does your church brand promote clarity or does it create confusion? Like it or not, branding can easily be the difference between visitors who don’t come back and excited new members who join. Tend your brand in a way that tells a simple, coherent story. P.S. Simple and clear doesn’t always mean easy. That’s why I offer a complete rebrand package for churches who are tired of mismatched branding and want a permanent fix.

Today I want to exhort you. Keep up the good work! I’m encouraged to keep pressing on when I hear stories or see online that you’re tending your church brand. Here’s how I’m trying to follow suit! Writing Daily I’ve been a lot more intentional about this, and people are noticing. Writing daily has helped me collect lessons learned in my work and articulate my unique philosophy around church branding. This has also given me content to pull from for social media posts. I’ve been able to easily share a combination of quick quotes from this newsletter and finished rebrands without having to switch into writing mode for every post. Understanding My Audience I’ve started paying attention to which of my brand’s touch points are having the biggest impact. To do this I have some website analytics running and some questions I ask now on introduction calls. This helps me focus my writing and website copy on what’s relevant and engaging for my audience and clients. Community Participation This year I’ve made it a goal to give back to pastors and churches wherever I can. Part of that effort has been interacting and responding to posts in a Facebook group called Church Creatives. This is a wonderful community of 80,000+ pastors and church staff who appreciate the value of creativity/ design for churches and ministries. The second thing I’m doing is distilling my branding experience into free resources that pastors can use to align their branding with their vision, prepare for a rebrand, and make a bigger impact. More on these in the near future. That all seems like a lot, but what’s made it manageable is a daily cadence and habit of tending my brand, even if it’s just 10 minutes of jotting down some notes or reacting to a Facebook post. So take it as an encouragement: You can do it too!

Your brand can have a smell. My in-laws live in a Hawaii and only make their way to the US mainland once a year. Something I take for granted here is Chick Fil A, but they don’t have one on the big island. When they do come to visit, we eat Chick Fil A nearly every day. What’s the big deal? They have fried chicken in Hawaii. But the experience of walking into that brick building with the red accent colors, savory smells, and friendly staff saying “My pleasure” can’t be replicated. The tastes, smells, language, and visuals all work together to create a truly iconic brand, which is why Chick Fil A has been so successful and received so much praise. Here’s the point: Your church brand shouldn’t just be visual.

I’ll admit, I fit the graphic designer stereotype. I spend too much time oohing and ahhing over mockups, color palettes, and typefaces, and little tiny details that nobody else cares about. One way I fit the designer stereotype is that I’m a font hoarder… “That new typeface I bought? I know I saved it here somewhere….” “I’ll definitely use this font at some point… unlike the other one I bought last year and never used…” Maybe I am Michael Scott: Oscar: “Okay, the green bar is what you spend every month on stuff you need, like a car and a house.” Michael: “That's so cool how you have my name at the top.” Oscar: “The red bar is what you spend on non-essentials, like magazines, entertainment. And this scary black bar is what you spend on things that no one ever, ever needs, like multiple magic sets, professional bass fishing equipment.” Michael: “How did you do this so fast? Is this PowerPoint?” In that spirit, I want to share eight free or inexpensive fonts that you can use in your church branding to bring it into the 21st century and give it some life without breaking the bank. 1. Funnel Display / Funnel Sans Funnel Sans and Funnel Display are modern sans-serif typefaces with both clarity and character, originally developed by NORD ID and Kristian Möller for Funnel. Funnel Sans is a functional yet personal sans-serif, featuring both square and circular shapes in its letterforms. In Funnel Display, certain parts of the stems are shifted to further enhance the sense of movement. Get it here. 2. Inknut Antiqua Inknut Antiqua is an Antiqua typeface for literature and long-form text. Approaching the idea of web-publishing as a modern day private press, it is designed to evoke Venetian incunabula and humanist manuscripts, but with the quirks and idiosyncrasies of the kinds of typefaces you find in this artisanal tradition. Get it here. 3. TeX Gyre Bonum TeX Gyre Bonum can be used as a replacement for ITC Bookman (designed by Alexander Phemister, 1860, redesigned by Edward Benguiat, 1975). Get it here. 4. Outfit Outfit follows the forms of classic (and classy) geometric sans-serif families like Futura, but with 21st century features and modifications. Get it here. 5. Afacad The ’Afacad typeface project’ commenced in 2017 as a personalised lettering endeavour for Slagskeppet, a Swedish housing tenant, who sought fresh house address numbering for their entrances. The letters and numerals were meticulously crafted to harmonise with the architectural proportions and materials employed by Architect Sture Elmén during the 1940s. Get it here. 6. Felonia Felonia is an elegant serif font that blends retro and classic vibes, offering sophistication and a touch of nostalgia to your designs. Its timeless appeal makes it perfect for creating fresh and innovative designs. Get it here. 7. Hepta Slab Hepta Slab is a slab-serif revival based on specimens of antique genre types from Bruce and Co., primarily Antique 307. The family is a variable font which consists of 10 weights with the extremes intended for display use and the middle weights for setting text. Get it here. 8. Gambarino / Gambetta Gambarino is a condensed, single-weight serif face for headlines. Gambetta is intended for use in book design and in editorial design; the fonts come from Paul Troppmar. Get Gambarino here. Get Gambetta here.

If there’s a disconnect between your vision and your church visuals, you might have considered a rebrand at some point. There are different ways to approach a church rebrand, but there are two old ways of doing it that can be anywhere from “just ok” to a total disaster. The Bootstrapped Brand This seems like the intuitive way for a lot of churches. Here’s how this approach normally looks: Have a member design your logo Find a font that “looks nice” Rebrand again in 2 or 3 years when you outgrow it You don’t feel like investing much time and resources into the rebrand, so you rely on a home-grown approach instead. Here’s the problem: without a professional designer, what these churches get is probably not the best quality, and probably won’t last as long as they want it to. The Secular Agency This second way seems like it solves the problems inherent in the bootstrapped rebrand. Here’s what it often looks like: Go online and find a designer who does corporate branding Endure 6 months or more of revisions and tweaking End up looking, well… corporate… This approach invests time and money into the rebrand, recognizing that a DIY identity is probably not what you want. The problem with hiring a secular agency, is that they are probably not specialists in branding for churches. They may not understand the unique two audience dynamic of a church brand, and they probably don’t have as much practice capturing a distinctly Christian aesthetic. The Better Way Maybe I’m biased, but there’s a better, more effective, and less stressful way to rebrand your church. I truly believe it’s critical to have a dedicated, professional designer who understands and specializes in churches. You shouldn’t have to pick between an expensive, year-long process of a secular agency or the uncertainty of doing it yourself. I do just that, but don’t take my word for it. Look at the portfolio of churches I’ve helped.

Where I live in Oklahoma is not too far away from Drummond Ranch. The Drummonds are a wealthy family with 433,000 acres of land in Osage County. I own 37 acres, which feels like too much some days. The Drummonds own more than 10,000 times more than that. It’s been said that at one point in the 1960’s they had an operation with 200,000 head of cattle. Those numbers are mind-blowing. If you’re a cattle rancher with 200,000 head, you can bet that branding (literal branding) is on your mind. Now let’s say you wanted to “rebrand” your ranch (I might be having too much fun with the wordplay). Even a tiny change would be massively costly. A ranch of that size would ruin its recognition (and finances) by rebranding every 5 years or even 10 years. If you truly needed to change your brand, there’s only one responsible thing to do: Spend the extra time and money to future-proof the rebrand. Upgrading your branding to something more timeless is a financially savvy move in the long run. Get a brand without an expiration date, and tending it will become easier.