Why Hot Pink is the Perfect Church Color

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.

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.

It’s easy to look at only your church logo in isolation and think “Our branding is taken care of.” Here’s the problem: Most churches aren't using their branding toolkit very well. Or worse, they don't have one at all. Their website and bulletins look like they could belong to any church. Even with their logo on it, it says nothing about their vision and identity. Having a roadmap and process is all some churches need to get through a rebrand. For others, they need someone to guide them past the traps and time-sucks that can slow them down or make them give up all together. If your church is stuck with a lacking or nonexistent branding toolkit, I can help you fix that, without all the technical headaches, delays, and uncertainty of a DIY rebrand. Not only does it save stress, having a trusted design partner makes sure that you launch the new brand sooner rather than later, and with lots of buy-in from your congregation. I have a couple of openings over the next month, so let’s talk soon to see what that could look like in your church.