How to Use Color on Your Church Website (The 70-20-10 Rule)

Especially in the ministry world, we tend to think of a brand as a logo, color, or font... something flashy and new to get people's attention. But this is completely backwards. Brand is the gut feeling people have about your organization. Branding is how we shape and cultivate that gut feeling. By being intentional with your look, feel, and tone, you're associating those things with your church: everything it does and stands for. Hopefully, that association is one of trust and goodwill. Your logo, colors, and tagline are just a few of the ways that association can be made, but these things are not inherently a “brand.” They're tools for the purpose of making a repeatable association. That's why its so important to regularly tend your brand. With patience and intentionality, eventually you will see progress. Your church will start to identify with your brand because it signifies their shared history, values, and purpose. That’s when you can start to reap the benefits of your people’s trust, unity, and zeal.

Have you heard the term "visitor journey?" A good rule of thumb for churches is that a visitor should have no less than 5 brand “touchpoints," or places where they can interact with your brand. The best way I've found to identify those touchpoints is to think about your visitor journey. What do they see? Who do they talk to? How long do they spend in each place? This is critical to get right for larger churches, but it also applies to a church plant reaching their community for the first time. Here’s a starter outline of a visitor journey: Visitor finds you online (do they see photos of your people, building, or logo?) They drive up to your parking lot (do they see the same people, building, and logo?) They walk inside (do they see wayfinding? A welcome banner? A greeter with a name tag?) They sit down in the sanctuary (do they see at least one announcement slide that is relevant to them? What about in the bulletin?) I’ll let you continue your list from there, but here's the thing: If you can’t remember what your visitor journey looks like, your visitors probably aren’t remembering your church either.

Last year, my wife started selling old-fashioned lye soaps and shampoos made from goats milk. To distribute and label them, she had to make some decisions about packaging. Clear plastic shrink wrap is easy and practical. It turns each bar of soap into a self-contained unit that wont get damaged or worn, shows the entire bar, and makes shipping so much easier. Makes perfect sense, right? After selling countless bars and getting a lot of customer feedback, she realized that her packaging was actually working against her. People were buying her soap because they wanted a more home-grown, organic, less commercialized experience. She was using packaging that was plastic, shiny, and sterile. It was communicating the opposite of her brand! When she made the switch to brown craft paper, she immediately saw a positive response from our customers. “It looks so eco-friendly!” “I love that I can smell it in the store!” Is there anything you’re doing that’s unintentionally sending the wrong message?

Part of my process when I help a church to rebrand involves giving them what I call a “branding toolkit.” This is basically a set of logos, colors, fonts, patterns, textures, photography, etc. they can use to quickly create digital graphics or print pieces that look and feel like their church. In the past, I’ve handed this toolkit off as just digital files, stored on a hard drive or in the cloud. It worked, but it was a little clunky. Then I found out about Canva Brand Kits. These were a game changer… and the best part is, churches get Canva Pro for free. (Canva didn’t sponsor this or anything like that, in fact I despised it for a long time because of how simplistic it used to be... it’s a powerhouse now) With a brand kit, your whole visual identity is a living, breathing system. Your colors are live swatches rather than just hex codes. Your fonts are set up as different styles and apply with just a click. I think I’m behind the times on this, but I wanted to share it in case you or your staff haven’t taken full advantage of brand kits. Have you tried it? Hit reply and let me know how it went.