timing

A church rebrand can be a lot like cleaning the house: You know you need to do it, but it always takes longer than you thought. There’s not an exact number of weeks or months, but I’ve noticed some patterns that can give you a ballpark idea for how long a church rebrand takes. Here’s the formula: 12 Months or Hard Deadline / Designer Availability (1-4) + 1 week per committee member Hard Deadline This formula is part of why I encourage pastors to set a hard deadline for the launch. Without one, it’s easy to keep making minor tweaks for months, with diminishing returns. Many churches I've worked with have chosen to announce the rebrand at an annual gathering or upcoming church event. This gives you less flexibility, but it’s a great way to keep your eyes on the prize and push through sticking points. Committee Size The larger the group, the harder it becomes to schedule meetings, commit to colors, and review designs. Decision paralysis is a documented phenomenon that is amplified by more inputs. Only adding 1 week per committee member may not be enough, but it’s close. Designer Availability Using an in-house designer is going to be the most flexible and fastest way to rebrand, hands down. With a larger agency, you may be one of dozens of clients and might not get the fastest turnaround. I personally only take on a couple of new clients per month so I can focus my attention on the project at hand, keeping it on track. Transition Time Smaller churches may not have much in the way of merch, letterhead, or building signage. They may or may not have a website. In the design world, we lump all these items into a category we call "brand collateral" or "collateral" for short. For larger churches, the transition may take longer because they have more collateral to update. Building signs can take weeks to get printed or manufactured, the website needs to be redesigned, and merch probably needs to be created.

There’s a time for everything: A time to change your brand and a time to double down, A time to whisper with your logo and a time to shout, A time to plant seeds of your vision and a time to water them, A time to honor your heritage and a time to distance yourself from the past, A time to speak to your congregation and a time to speak to your community, A time to be bold and a time to be subtle, A time to plan communications and a time to wing it, A time to seek design help and a time to do it yourself, A time to repeat yourself and a time to say something new. Consider the times as you tend your brand!

For creative decision-making, I’m a huge fan of the 3-person team/committee. But why? Proverbs tells us that in an abundance of counselors there is safety, so what could go wrong with a large committee? This is actually a serious mistake I’ve seen organizations fall prey to when it comes to creative-heavy projects like a rebrand. Here are a few of the downsides to a large team: Decision paralysis Studies show that the larger the decision-making group, the more individual members fear making the wrong decision. When no single person has authority, consensus is hard hard to reach and people feel overwhelmed by the consequences of the choice. Scheduling problems The obvious and most painful part of setting up a church branding team is finding a time when everyone is available to meet. Above a team size of 3 or 4, you can expect to add a week of lead time per extra person to every major decision throughout the project. Conflicting preferences Believe it or not, you actually want your church rebrand team to all have similar (but not identical) design taste. Mixing a few complimentary perspectives can have interesting and pleasing results. Involving too many people in the creative process is like mixing too many colors of paint. The result either won’t look unified (think Picasso) or it will be boring and generic (think brown sludge).

Limitation breeds creativity. Ask any artist or creative person, and they’ll tell you that their proudest moments are when they’ve solved a problem with restrictions, limitations, or pressure. Whether it’s limited time, resources, space, color, etc. those boundaries become a unique seed in which creativity grows and blossoms. This applies to new projects and ongoing brand work (aka tending your brand). Here’s the point: Don’t be afraid to put limitations in place. Committing to a deadline, color palette, or style is actually one of the best things you can do for your brand.

Having visuals and event graphics is great, but not just because those things make it easier to do promotion. The ultimate goal of an event brand is to make the experience “sticky” and memorable. To maximize that memorability, you’ll want to approach different types of events differently. There are tons of ways to categorize church events, but the one that matters for design and branding is timing. That said, here are the three different types of events (by timing) and how you can approach branding for each. Series Ongoing regular events in the life of your church that happen with a faster cadence (e.g. monthly or quarterly). For these, a new set of visuals for every event would almost definitely be overkill. However, there’s an opportunity for creativity. Instead of branding each event, consider giving the series a brand that persists throughout the year. If you need some variation to distinguish these regular events from one another, change something minor like a background color or a photo for each occurrence, keeping the design the same. Annual Annual events offer more flexibility and room to experiment with the unique event visuals. A lot of churches will approach annual events with an entirely new set of visuals each year, which is totally fine! As long as certain things about the event are consistent year to year, it can even become a beloved part of your church’s overall brand. Here’s what should stay the same for that to work: The event name Who the event is for What happens at the event (although there’s room to adjust this as well) You can also choose to treat Annual events in a similar way to Series events, keeping the core visuals the same and making minor tweaks. One-Off Do whatever feels right! One-Off events are an opportunity to go wild, but they’re also a chance to rely on the branding you use for everything else. If it’s an event you might eventually turn into a regular thing, then consider designing something simple to make it easier for people to remember. The goal of all event branding is to be memorable. If you don’t remember an event, it probably didn’t have an impact.

Let’s face it, keeping church creative projects on track is hard. Any of these sound familiar…? Event materials aren’t ready by the time registration opens. Sending another late Easter billboard design to the billboard company. Putting projects on next year’s budget because you know it won’t get done this year. It’s easy to get desensitized to delays, unmet deadlines… these problems just become a part of life. But the place they lead to is deadly for church leaders. That place is uncertainty. How can you set 1 year, 2 year, and 5 year goals if you don’t know how long each goal will take? Now, I’m not saying that you can absolute certainty about how long every new website change or signage update will take.. lots of factors contribute. But, most pastors don’t even have a ballpark idea of how long something like that should take. Imagine the difference it would make to be able to know when all your big creative projects will wrap up, even if you’re off by a couple of weeks every now and then. Rather than juggling deadlines and spec sheets with vendors and feeling out of your depth taking to volunteer designers, you could be spending quality time with your family, studying your sermon prep for Sunday, or reflecting on longer term goals. I’ll write more about creative project management for churches in the future, so stay tuned if you’re interested in that!

Years ago when I first started freelancing, I was clueless about project management. If you asked me then how I made sure a project got done before the deadline, I would have said “Deadline? I didn’t think to ask!” Around the time I started running brand identity projects for churches, I realized my laissez faire approach wasn’t doing me any favors. So, I started working on systems and processes that would help creative projects run smoother and finish faster. At this point I’ve spent hundreds of hours on those systems and processes, and it’s been worth every second. Creating those project systems and processes, I didn’t have to start from scratch. I borrowed the best tricks from the organizations I’ve worked for, whose project management teams were coordinating 200+ projects per year and spending millions of dollars printing and publishing content. During my 8 years as a designer and art director, I’ve developed a razor sharp sense for creative project timelines and logistics. So, here’s my advice: Get someone with creative project experience on retainer (I offer one that’s geared especially for churches), or invest in a project management tool like Notion or ClickUp. Help your church creative projects look like a well-oiled machine, rather than an oil spill.

Whether you’re beginning to pastor at a new church, or graduating to a leadership role with more authority, you can expect a laundry list of things to take care of. Progress is slow-moving and happens in tiny increments, one battle at a time. Planning can turn into a battle itself, with unknowns and budget pressures building up as the weeks on the calendar roll along by. There are things you know you need to do, but you don’t have a clear path yet, so they linger in the back of your mind, popping up to the surface every so often to cause some anxiety before getting pushed back down by more immediate concerns. A rebrand is one of those things for a lot of pastors, which causes lurking, accumulating stress even a year out. Because I’ve walked through many a church rebrand, I offer consultations with pastors who are seeing a church rebrand on the horizon but aren’t quite ready to pull the trigger. It helps them feel prepared and ready so they can focus on other things until the moment is right. If that sounds like you, I’d be happy to chat - even if you’re still a ways out and aren’t ready to make a decision. Talking to a seasoned expert and solidifying a basic strategy can make all that anxiety go away. In fact, for many church leaders, the stress gets replaced by excitement. The big rebrand or new website goes from being a fog of uncertainty to being a light at the end of the tunnel. If you want that kind of clarity, you can book a consultation straight from my calendar, and we’ll build a plan for getting you to a stress-free, successful rebrand that lasts for decades.

Many of us - perhaps all of us - have “that” libertarian uncle. Mine lives in a tiny off grid house he built himself in the woods. Sometimes I think he might be smarter than all of us. Last week was a rare occasion I got to see this uncle, and he told me something I had never heard in my life about how trees grow. Not all trees, but many species we have here in North America, grow very slowly during the first phase of their life - just a few inches per year. Then later in life, the tree will shoot up at a rate of two feet or more per year. That’s only half of the story though. What you don’t see during those early years is the root system spreading far, deep, and wide. Only after establishing its root system and being presented with the right conditions will the tree begin to grow rapidly. Tending your brand is a lot like this. Building a brand is slow work, that takes steady effort over months and years. There are very few obvious indicators of progress in the early stages, and it can feel like you’re not getting anywhere. This is when most people turn to a quick, copy-and-paste logo redesign or a new initiative to get people excited. My encouragement to you is to keep up the intentional branding, invest the time and money, and wait patiently to see it bear fruit in due season.