Designing a New Logo for St. Mark's Lutheran Church

I'm on a committee to improve the digital presence of our church, St. Mark's Lutheran in Fairfield, California. That includes the website, newsletters, and social media channels. Our first step was developing a brand kit, one component of which is a logo that represents who we are as St. Mark's. On Sunday, after a lot of hard work, we debuted our new logo. 

The first step in creating a logo was deciding what we wanted it to say about us. During our two most recent congregational retreats, we have focused on how we see ourselves as a congregation and how others see us. I used the detailed notes from these retreats to identify the five key words that were mentioned the most often to describe us: Welcoming; Friendly; Generous; Faithful; and Family. Put together into a sentence, they became: "At St. Mark's, we are a welcoming, friendly, generous, and faithful church family." This sentence guided the rest of the process. 

Next, I researched the colors associated with each of the five key words.

• Welcoming = yellow (bright, cheerful, inviting, energetic)
• Friendly = orange (warm, social, outgoing)
• Generous = green (nature, balance, kindness, growth, renewal)
• Faithful = white (reverence, purity)
• Family = green (growth, stability, belonging)

Based on this, we set a color palette of green, white, yellow, and orange, to show that we are welcoming, friendly, generous, faithful, and a family.

There are countless shades of each of those colors, so as a next step, I went to the sanctuary and took photos of our stained glass and other architectural features. Then I used an eyedropper tool to pull the colors directly from the digital files to create a handful of potential color palettes. 

While the rest of the team picked just the right shades, I started designing logo options in greyscale, incorporating images and shapes that fit with our guiding sentence. The team selected their favorites and we looked at those logos in the colors that represent our St. Mark's family. From there, we selected our new logo.

If you are interested in seeing my actual presentation to the congregation, you can watch it below: 

Thanks to my fellow committee members: Ann, Diane, June, and Pastor Karen. We're a great team. I love our new logo!