
One Critical Mistake Churches Make With Their Logo
Church leaders should invest time into creating a great logo for their church. You hear any arguments from me about that. Design is the international language we all understand. Good or bad it says something about who or what our churches are.
But if there was one mistake I know happens it is this. Focus. Many, many hours are focussed on developing the logo, without any thought or consideration to the brand.
The visual brand identity of your church is so much more than your just logo. As Seth Godin says ‘your brand is a story, a set of emotions and expectations and a stand-in for how we think and feel about what you do.’
Peter McGowan from Plain Joe Studios speaking at #SimplyCommunicate says that “Design is intentionally and strategically thinking through your story, and how it impacts your brand and culture… branding is not just about logos, fonts and colours, those are key elements of a brand, but ultimately the brand is about an emotional response.”
No church logo just by itself can come close to evoking the same response. It’s all about that focus issue. Don’t be too narrow. Seth goes on and says that brands should spend much more money on their branding and brand than their logo.
I agree. Don’t let your logo become the sum of all parts, rather than just a part of the whole sum. To put it another way, your logo is like the full stop at the end of your sentence. (Check out 10 Common Branding Mistakes That Churches Make)
Your turn
Agree Disagree? What would you add? Comment below.
I agree with this wisdom. The challenge with the brand becoming a story that illicits an emotional response is that many churches struggle to be honest with themselves about who they are and who they are trying to reach with a practical application of the Gospel to their community. Most churches need the help of someone they respect from outside of their leadership to help guide that conversation and to help them ask the tough questions that they will be afraid to ask.
Always great to hear your wisdom David. I think it comes down to this. How would someone respond if you talked about your church, what emotive response does is bring… if you are telling people about the great things the church is doing in the community you are building a positive experience.
Asking ‘what do people really think of our church in the community?’ is scary, but reality is actually a good starting point to improve.
Interesting article Steve and one that very much applies to many churches. It would be great if you could expand on a response to creating a great brand for churches. I agree that gaining an emotional response from your congregation is important; it’s important that they will own and champion your new church brand and logo.
Hi Daniel, thanks for dropping a comment. I usually go into a lot of detail but on a broad topic like this it is too broad to cover on all the aspects of the extension of the brand. I think the point generally is that the emotional response and connection goes beyond the logo, brochure, website. They are of course important, but the ‘brand’ emotive response would be built in terms of churches would be people interaction, whether on a Sunday or through community.
Great food for thought, Steve. 🙂
Thanks Eric!
This is a great read. For a Graphic Artist like myself who cater mostly to churches, I do mostly talk to the church leaders… and I truly appreciate when they listen. Sometimes, the church leaders are old (pardon me) and not very in tune with current design styles. When that happens, I really follow their instructions as much as I can and then give another option with my own interpretation of what they want… thankfully, most of the time, they choose my work. On the other side of the spectrum, there are those who request their logo to be “not so churchy” meaning they want it extremely modern and more like a business logo… sometimes that works but it fails to represent who they are… Their intention is to attract more people who may be turned off by church symbols… there is always a way to get the style more recent, cool even hip without dropping the focus of their logo.