Controversial opinion: Your logo cannot tell your story.
Logos have come up in a lot of my conversations lately. I’ve been developing new ones, talking with a prospective client about whether their current logo needs another look, and working with a membership client whose logo is the starting point for their entire identity and mission statement.
In a proposal I sent this morning, I asked one question: what should someone conclude about your church after a few seconds of looking?
A few seconds is all a logo gets. A newcomer meets it on a website, a sign, or a bulletin, and they form an impression before they read a word. You cannot tell a whole story in that time. A logo doesn’t even have to tell part of your story as long as it supports it. Controversial opinion, I know.
What a logo can do is help people draw quick, accurate conclusions about things like temperament, relevance, and character. Is this church formal or relaxed? Traditional, or trying a little too hard to be current? Is it a place for someone like me, with a life like mine? A logo can’t answer those questions in full. It can point a stranger in the right direction.
Here are three logos I delivered recently and what each one says.
A small, artistic church that marches to its own beat got a modern, slightly abstract dove. It says this church is contemporary and creative, and that people who think differently will feel at home.
Another church got a hand-sketched steeple among trees. Place is central to that congregation’s ministry, because the church anchors its neighborhood. It says this church is rooted in the life of this community, and it already feels familiar to people who have never been inside.
A third church got a cross framed in a shape based on their sanctuary, with mountains and trees visible through it like stained glass. The lines are soft and blended. A cross is what you expect from a church, but a cross set against mountains and trees is not what you expect to see. It says this church is warm and rooted in the world around it, and that it is not like every other church you have visited.
The colors and fonts for each are dramatically different. None of these logos explains a mission statement, and none of them carries layers of deep theological meaning. They don’t need to. Each one helps a stranger decide quickly and accurately whether they are interested. Meaning can build over time for the people who stay. A logo’s first job is to be distinct for the people who haven’t arrived yet.
Your logo says more about you than you think, and it is probably saying things you haven’t considered. Look at yours the way a stranger would, for three seconds. What might they conclude?
Go disrupt something,
Christen
