creation

Okay, so the title is a little hyperbolic. But picking colors really is one of the most mysterious and notional aspects of branding. That’s why today I want to help demystify this part of a church rebrand. Demonstrating intentionality is arguably the most important part of any church rebrand, and that applies not just to color but to every design choice. If you can show a proven, meaningful process was used, it can generate tremendous buy-in and overcome objections. In this post, I’ll overview that proven, meaningful process. We’ll look at where to find good colors and how to harmonize them, ultimately creating a pleasing, God-glorifying palette. A color palette built with this process is hard to argue with! Where to Find Good Colors The short answer is: in God’s created world! I recently was listening to this podcast episode about color, painting, and art (not as boring as it sounds). The guest, Forrest Dickinson, talked about how Scottish tweed makers will go out into the countryside, capture a swatch of colors from their environment, and use those colors in their designs. What’s stopping us from doing the same thing? Find or take a photo of your church building, its surroundings, or something in your environment that fits the aesthetic you’re going for. This is going to be your reference image. How to Harmonize Your Church Colors Color is light. And much like sound, it has different wavelengths that represent different parts of a spectrum. When those wavelengths align in certain patterns, they harmonize. A great place to start is by choosing what I like to call “Core Colors.” Your core colors are the duo, trio, or quartet that glue your whole brand together. Start by choosing a light and a dark. This could be white and black if you’re going for a very bold and edgy vibe. I like to choose an off-white or pastel from the highlights in my reference image and a dark color from the shadows. Then, choose one or two more saturated colors between your light and dark in terms of brightness. These should be more vibrant and pop a little more. Type out your church name in a Word Doc or in Canva. Make the background one color and the text another color from your core color palette. Try different combinations for the text and background. Is the text readable in most of them? If not, you may want to adjust the values until they have better contrast. If you follow these steps, you’re more likely than not to come up with a pleasing, Christ-honoring harmony of colors that will be functional in print and digital spaces! Try it for yourself.

I love magic. I’ve probably watched movies like the Prestige and the Illusionist more times than most people. But I recently learned the origins of a phrase that magicians love to say: “Abracadabra.” It comes from the Ancient Aramaic phrase, “Avra Kedavra,” meaning “I create as I speak.” We worship a God who is creative, the first sentence of the Bible tells us. But how does he create? We find out in the following verses that he does so with his speech. Words are how the God of the universe chose to express his creativity. We get to imitate his creativity using our own words. And it’s easier to do this now than ever. Because of AI, we live in a time where anyone can create anything - pictures, video, and interactive experiences - using just words. It feels like magic. With such a powerful tool at our disposal, should we not meditate on how this can be used to create things that will honor our Creator?

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?