Why the Grace Font and the Dyslexia Friendly Bible is Brilliant

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.

Sometimes you’re stuck with a brand you inherited from whoever came before you. If the gut feelings and associations around that brand are good, then you don’t want to throw everything out and start over from scratch. As my dad would say: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. That’s true… but… there comes a time when you could use a little refresh to make that brand more effective, without losing the trust and goodwill built up in the past. You need a good old Rebrand Lite™️ Color adjustments One option is to brighten up your color palette slightly, bringing a little more energy and vibrancy without losing the hues that are recognized by your congregation. Logo adjustments A second way to do a light brand refresh is to refine your existing logo. What is the core idea it represents? Is there anything that distracts from that core idea? What happens if you simplify it just slightly? If it’s multiple colors, is there a way to make it work in a single color? This is a more advanced option, but even a slight adjustment can help your logo look more clean and confident. Font adjustments There are two elements to typography: selection and application. Fonts can be tricky to navigate because there are so many bad ones out there. Rather than picking totally new fonts, think about how your existing fonts that could be used in a new creative way. If you’re pruning things that distract, and nurturing things that bear fruit, you’ll be able to make an outdated brand work for a long time! It’s not a forever solution, but hopefully these strategies can make a difference in the meantime.

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.

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.

Galvanize your congregation. Build trust and unity. Can branding do that? A healthy church brand actually provides a mental framework for your members to fit their knowledge and experiences into. If you’re like me, and most other humans, you need “hooks” to hang information on. Otherwise you forget it. As your congregation participates in the life of your church, they are becoming disciples of Christ. They are being taught God’s word and how to follow it. Through branding, you can give your people more hooks to hang that knowledge on. A Christ-centered brand can help them connect the dots between their shared identity and their shared purpose. In other words, you’re drawing that connection between who they are as a local church body and the ultimate reason your church exists. Let’s look at an example. One church I worked with recently was Heritage Church in Shawnee, OK. Heritage had identified five core values or purposes that they wanted their congregation to live out each week. Through this rebrand process, we turned those core values into icons, each with a color that represented part of their vision. Those core values icons integrated into their logo and helped them teach the distinctives that made Heritage unique as a local church. We also turned the icons into a pattern that they could use on everything, even down to bookmarks. The best part was, each of their core values is more memorable and “sticky”. Every design pointed back to the brand Heritage had created around their shared identity as a church body.

I was looking through a “Church Creatives” Facebook group I’m a part of and I came across this post: While the top comment here is a little snarky, he’s absolutely right: Having a well-defined visual brand all starts with defining your vision. What does your logo stand for?

We often think of form and function as a dichotomy. Sacrificing beauty for efficiency is putting function over form. Making something sleek and attractive at the cost of performance is putting form over function. Here’s my hot take: The form-function dichotomy is wrong. Form and function are two sides of the same coin. The name of the coin is elegance, or more simply “goodness.” And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. — Genesis 1:31a We don’t assess beauty in a vacuum. If a thing doesn’t accomplish its purpose, can it be beautiful? The Roman aqueducts were built with masterful craftsmanship and still stand to this day, 2000 years later. They transported millions of gallons of water over a hundred miles, making them extremely functional. But would they be beautiful if they didn’t work? If a thing’s only purpose is to be beautiful, does it matter if it can do anything else?

If you have a good sense of fashion or a job that requires professional attire, you may have at one point gotten a custom-fitted suit. I’ve done this myself, and it felt great to have a jacket and pants that had been tweaked to fit my measurements. But the next level up is something I’ve never done, and that’s getting a custom-tailored suit made from scratch, with full customization of every detail. Unless you’re lucky and have a very specific body-type and build, you probably won’t find an existing garment that fits you as well as a bespoke suit would. I had a friend who got this done right after college, and I remember thinking, “Boy, I buy my shirts at TJ-Maxx, but he’s a real adult.” Here’s the application: Getting a custom-tailored suit signals personal maturity. In a similar way, getting a custom-tailored visual identity signals organizational maturity. For a visual identity to be custom-tailored means each part is carefully crafted to fit your organization. The logo is designed to represent your vision. The wordmark is tweaked and hand-picked to evoke a particular feeling. The colors are harmonized to stand out in your local context. Getting a bespoke visual identity signals organizational maturity. Bonus: If you have a custom-tailored suit with a very specific look, you probably don’t have to worry about theft - It won’t fit just anyone who tries it on.

When God's people gather for corporate worship, we've always looked for ways to beautify the space in which we meet. Sometimes you don’t have a choice for what your meeting space looks like. Many churches and church plants share a building with someone else. Others might own their building but just don't have the budget to start knocking down walls. However, the design and layout of common spaces in your church building will either help or hinder people feeling welcome and at home in your church. When my wife and I bought our first house, we were excited to host people for meals and fellowship. You can imagine that I was disappointed when I realized that the layout of our walls and floor plan made fellowship difficult. A wall separated the kitchen from the living room, and the dining area tried to straddle the two rooms, which made it awkward to socialize while we cooked food for our guests. Conincidentally, we're standing where you would have to stand while talking with someone in the kitchen. When we decided to build a house, we designed the floor plan to be open and spacious. Not being interior designers or “feng shui” experts, we were expecting that this new layout would solve our problem. It did - but not perfectly! After all that, there are things I would still do differently to make our home as welcoming and supportive of fellowship as possible. Our new house, still a work in progress. If you own your church building and can afford it, seek out a professional for help creating a space that is beautiful and inspiring. Regardless of your situation, don’t take for granted opportunities to beautify the place you're gathering for corporate worship. At the end of the day, there's nothing that is more welcoming than a friendly, genunine person. Inspire your congregation to be that hospitable through their environment.

I want to share a quick story to illustrate the danger of cognitive blind spots. Every night, we bring our 7 goats, 20 chickens, and two dogs inside a perimeter of electric netting. I could do this routine blindfolded in my sleep. But this time something was different, and I almost missed it. To power the fence, we have a switch and an energizer mounted next to a hay bale, but what I almost didn’t notice was that the fence charger had disappeared. I flipped the switch on and turned toward the house when I heard a quiet “click” sound coming from the ground, under a pile of hay. The energizer had been knocked off its mount and was totally concealed under loose hay and straw. I was so used to my routine that I didn’t even notice when something critical was missing. Here’s the point: Something can be wrong or missing right under our noses, and we don’t notice because we aren’t looking for it. It’s why people bring in outside perspectives, and it’s how I’m able to help churches with their design and branding. If you’re not keeping tabs on everything all the time, or if you don’t know what to look for, you’ll probably miss something.