When the Carpet Doesn't Match the Drapes

Let's say your brand’s hero color was a bright red. Your wayfinding signs should be red to be on-brand, right? Not so fast! Would you put a bright red couch in your living room? What about multiple bright red paintings throughout your home? Again, probably not. For environmental signage and way-finding, we have to think more like interior designers and accessibility experts than graphic designers. Earlier in the rebrand process, we had developed a brand color palette for this particular church with a dark charcoal color we called “Forge Black.” Using this darker, more neutral color as the main background was a good choice for three reasons: It wouldn’t clash with the paint, flooring, and other interior colors of the building. It wouldn’t show dirt as easily as a lighter color. It would allow for the most legibility and contrast for the text. As you can see, we did bring in the red hero color, but only in a very intentional, minimalist way. Even the logo on the signs was intentionally subdued and understated to make room for more important information, like “¿donde esta el baño?”

If you go read online, ask ChatGPT, or just generally do color-related research, you know how big of a topic color really is. If you’re like me, it can leave you feeling a little… lost? People have written books and given 2 hour lectures on color theory, color psychology, digital color management, and everything in between. Even just scratching the surface can feel completely overwhelming. You might be thinking, “It feels like I should be using these principles, but how do I actually put them into practice for my church?” Even after reading my work specifically about church brand colors, it might not be clear how to actually apply this knowledge to your specific needs. And at end of the day, color is just one piece of the puzzle. That’s where having a personal guide can be a total game changer. With someone to make objective recommendations and help you avoid common mistakes, not only will you save time, you’ll save the headache of having to rethink your branding decisions in a few years. Ideally you would want this person to be a proven expert who loves the capital “C” Church and has a strong track record of branding success stories. If you’re looking for that kind of guidance, I’ve spent countless hours meeting with church leaders and translating their gut feelings into concrete messaging and visuals. I know the struggles and hurdles pastors face when nailing down exactly how their church should look, speak, and feel. Book a strategy call with me and I’ll talk with you one-on-one about what your goals are, the context your church is in, and how you can make your branding fit without the DIY headaches. See you there!

Bonus 1: Use a color palette tool Creating, adjusting, saving and sharing color palettes isn’t actually all that easy. That’s where a color palette website can be invaluable. I mentioned this website up above called Coolors. When I first discovered it, I thought “where have you been all my life?!” Unlike most color websites out there, this one lets you do much more than browse and save color palettes. You can visualize your color palette in different contexts, do global adjustments to the whole palette at once, extract colors from an image, and even use a huge library of unique color names. They didn’t sponsor me, but I really like using it. Maybe you will too. Bonus 2: Ignore CMYK and Pantone …unless you’re working with a pro, that is. When I create a brand guide for a client, I include CMYK and Pantones as a nice addition, fully expecting that they will never be used. Almost all print shops and vendors these days have automatic conversion between color spaces that is usually reliable, accurate, and consistent. Even if you’re having screen printed t-shirts made or running off thousands of flyers, Pantone and CMYK values are only helpful in very specific situations. Long story short, HEX codes are probably all you need. P.S. This week I’m focusing on church brand color selection principles, which I’ve gathered the hard way from years of church rebrands. If you want the complete guide, I’ve collected all of the principles into a single post here.

Using tints and shades is a powerful way to get more mileage out of your visual identity without adding new base colors. What this means for color selection is that you don't have to worry about that exact palette working in every possible scenario. A tint is a lighter version of the same color. Shades are darker versions of the same color. Tint = Base color + white (lighter version) Shade = Base color + black (darker version) While you might not need them in everyday use (especially with a professionally designed color palette), there are situations where your standard set of base colors are going to clash or look too opinionated. For example, a limited color palette might handicap your web designer. Because websites are interactive and display lots of information in different formats, they often call for a suite of neutral colors, ranging from dark to light. You might also find that a particular color works well online and in print, but is too strong and vibrant for apparel. A tint or shade of that color might make for a more wearable and fashion-friendly t-shirt than the original swatch. If your palette feels incomplete or you’re looking for good supporting colors, consider using tints or shades of your core colors to round it out. P.S. This week I’m focusing on church brand color selection principles, which I’ve gathered the hard way from years of church rebrands. If you want the complete guide, I’ve collected all of the principles into a single post here.

I recently helped a church in Kansas City rebrand, and this project took much longer than we anticipated! This church needed collateral designed in preparation for their official launch of the new identity. Collateral like wayfinding signs, and A LOT OF THEM. 85 signs, to be exact. If you have a church building, chances are you have these! Way-finding signs are the built-in guide to your building, both for first-time visitors and those forgetful members who could probably get lost in their own house (you know who I’m talking about). Here’s the thing: there are some HUGE blunders that are easy to make with this type of signage. So, to save you from those, I thought I would show the design process I went through with this Kansas City church and their way-finding signs. In design, way-finding falls under the category of what we call “environmental design.” Most of these signs were going to be a part of the building, so we had to treat them more like a piece of furniture than a graphic or a poster. I'll be going over each one of these in future posts, where we'll explore what that looks like through two key considerations: Color and Typography. Stay tuned!

I recently reconnected with a distant cousin who was just starting a new role as a Worship Pastor in Texas. He had been immediately tasked with redesigning the church bulletin and some other collateral - a classic “worship-leader-becomes-graphic-designer” scenario. But he found something totally unexpected. More on that in a minute. See, my cousin had started with an audit of the church bulletin. It was bad. I’m talking 1990s clip-art, 10 different fonts, and a migraine-inducing layout. Then he looked at the rest of the campus. Signage looked different in every hallway, and anything designed had that general “patched together” kind of vibe. The pastors all knew this stuff needed a redesign. The church had a logo people had grown to love and brand equity that was worth preserving. But without clear guidelines in place, things had slipped into visual inconsistency - badly. So, I asked them a simple question: “Have you thought about brand guidelines?” Their response? “No, but now we’re interested!” Until that moment, they had been focusing on the immediate problems that were painful, but they were treating the symptoms, not the disease. I explained to them how a brand refresh often benefits churches in their exact position. When you refresh your branding and put together brand guidelines, you’re not looking to reinvent the wheel or start from scratch. Instead, the goal is to bring clarity and consistency to what you already have. This is about making sure everything from bulletins to digital media feel like it belongs to the same church family. A brand audit and fresh set of guidelines can be perfect for maintaining the identity people recognize while elevating your overall quality and professionalism of communication. Neither my cousin nor I had expected this, but the church hired me on the spot, and we’re getting to work together to unify and future-proof their church branding. True story! If that’s something you’re thinking about for your brand, book a call with me and we can talk more about how to represent the work God is doing in the life of your church.

I recently helped a church in Kansas City rebrand, and this project took much longer than we anticipated! This church needed collateral designed in preparation for their official launch of the new identity. Collateral like wayfinding signs, and A LOT OF THEM. 85 signs, to be exact. If you have a church building, chances are you have these! Sample from OLD wayfinding and branding Way-finding signs are the built-in guide to your building, both for first-time visitors and those forgetful members who could probably get lost in their own house (you know who I’m talking about). Here’s the thing: there are some HUGE blunders that are easy to make with this type of signage. So, to save you from those, I thought I would show the design process I went through with this Kansas City church and their way-finding signs. In design, way-finding falls under the category of what we call “environmental design.” Most of these signs were going to be a part of the building, so we had to treat them more like a piece of furniture than a graphic or a poster. I'll be going over each one of these in future posts, where we'll explore what that looks like through two key considerations: Color and Typography. Stay tuned!

Every day around mid-morning, I take a bathroom break and that’s when I write these posts - gross I know, but it’s the perfect amount of time and I have no distractions (now you won’t be able to get that image out of your mind, so you’re welcome). Context aside, when I’m motivated and inspired it’s easy, but today I had some serious creative block of the “stare vacantly at a blank page and start the same sentence five times over” variety. I have a hunch this doesn’t just happen to creatives. Most of my readers are church leaders, I’ll wager that you probably experience that wall too. If so, maybe you can benefit from the two strategies I use to overcome creative block. 1. Short term strategy Exercise is my immediate strategy for overcoming it in the short term. I’ll go home after work, grab my dumbbells, and start lifting. Something about an intense workout stimulates my creativity and writing energy. However, that only works on that day, and if I can’t get a workout in, I’m in trouble. 2. Long term strategy My long term strategy to overcome creative block is to write daily. I used to think I didn’t have time for something recreational like writing, much less every day. But I realized that as long as I put it on the other side of something I enjoy more (chess puzzles), I could force myself to take 5-15 minutes and crank out a thought. Writing became a habit I was cultivating. Something you practice with regularity and discipline becomes easier and easier, and those creative block moments get fewer and farther between. Even when it takes a bit longer to get rolling, the groove is greased and the engine is still warm from yesterday. If there’s something you know you should be doing (maybe writing, maybe calling to check in on members, maybe something else) make it a small part of your daily routine and see how much you start feeling empowered when those “block” moments hit.

A pastor scheduled a call with me last month to talk about a new congregation his church is planting next year. I can’t tell you the name right now, but it was a church who was running over 500 and was starting to struggle with shaping the culture and collective mission of that many people. If they didn’t get their branding and a visual identity in place before the plant, rebranding would have just gotten more expensive and difficult. They didn’t want to miss the opportunity but they lacked the confidence to rebrand with their internal team alone. Where do you start? To even begin a branding project, we needed to figure out the problem they were trying to solve. Did this church need to… REFRESH their existing brand? REPOSITION their identity under a new vision? or REACH OUT with their message? The church had just undergone a name church that was being announced later in the year. Their leaders were trying to cast a vision that was outward-focused and kingdom-minded. At first, this made me think it was a REACH OUT case, but the more I dug in, the more I realized what they actually needed was to REPOSITION. Why? Well, let’s look at their goals. The outward focus was a culture they wanted to create in their church body. While they ultimately wanted to reach out with their message (all churches should), they couldn’t do that effectively until they first grounded their church in a collective vision that included more than just their immediate membership. Their brand didn’t reflect the long term vision for the church, and it needed to visually align before both congregations could shift their focus to their region and community. Hopefully you can see how the REPOSITION approach was needed for this case. Instead of jumping in trying to scale up misaligned branding, we needed to build on their values and rework the brand identity from the ground up.

How do you describe and brand your church without scaring visitors away or pretending to be something you’re not? Pastors will try, and most of the time the result is something like “We’re a church for everyone.” Or in more words, “We’re a welcoming community of people who love God and want to see the gospel reach every nation.” That’s great - so is every other Protestant church! This is a mistake I see pastors making all the time with their distinctives - stop it! What church leaders are trying to communicate (most of the time) is something like “we won’t turn you away because you’re different,” or “we’re welcoming and not judgmental.” But being hospitable and welcoming are just general marks of a Christian community, not distinctives. It’s great that you can say those things about your church, but they’re not something your congregation will rally around. Those things don’t give people a sense of unique belonging or identity, because they describe every other church. When you say, “We’re a church for everyone,” what you’re actually saying is, “We don’t know who we are.” I can hear some of you thinking “But we’re just your average church. The only thing distinctive about us is our street address!” I’m not saying you should pretend to be something you’re not. And I’m also not saying that every church should be trying to put their own spin on the gospel. Here’s my point: God is uniquely using your church to reach a specific group of people who are, by definition, not “everyone.” Rather than blurring the edges of that calling to be more inclusive or not scare people away, lean into it! Be known for your distinct church identity!

If you’re a church that does sermon series graphics, then you might have struggled with how far to push the envelope in those visuals. Do you download the latest free template from Free Church Media or Ministry Designs dot com? Do you design them in-house? For us creatives, it’s enticing to explore and use new visuals every few months. But I want to encourage you to curb that impulse. Here’s why: Those unbranded templates and graphics can ultimately work against your brand. But wait, they’re not permanent - what’s so bad about them? Over time, these graphics become part of your brand, whether you like it or not. Using templates that are fun, fresh, and modern might feel like a good way to keep things interesting, but over time that variety adds up into noise. Over time, too much variety accumulates into noise. Instead of your sermon graphics reinforcing your brand, they can start to pollute it. They start to appear disjointed and random when you sample them as a whole. To protect your brand, you need a common thread woven throughout. This is why brand guidelines are so important. They provide a fixed scope for visual styles. Robust brand guidelines will tell you not only what that common thread is, but how it should be integrated in different contexts. If you’re worried about your sermon graphics polluting your brand rather than reinforcing it, check your brand guidelines to see if there’s a way to bring that free template into alignment. If you don’t have brand guidelines, consider having some created. It’s a great way to get the most out of your existing logo and can help you add variety to your church’s communications, without feeling random.

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