A Crash Course in Making Church Graphics that Actually Work
Churches need good design. Every church is competing for attention in the same crowded spaces. Good design can help you stand out from the others. Luckily, whether you’re using Canva, the full Adobe Creative Suite, or any other tool, the power to create good design is more accessible than ever before.
The challenge is that the principles of good design, while accessible, have not been as readily adopted by the masses. Design is like most creative outlets: you don’t have to follow the rules to create something good…but following them will help you create something good consistently. Failure to follow the rules means spending hours of guesswork to deliver something that may or may not be effective. For a church, this could be the difference between capturing someone’s attention or losing it completely.
The good news is that you don’t need years of design school to learn some of these principles. You just need to understand the purpose behind what you’re designing and what the desired effect or outcome should be. Whether you’re on the creative team at your church or simply trying to diagnose why your church’s graphics lack luster, these 3 key principles should steer you in the right direction immediately.
Design is Communication, So Say It Clearly
Is your design helping or hurting your message? There is a purpose behind every design. In fact, graphic design is defined as “the art and practice of creating visual content to communicate messages, ideas, and feelings.” With this definition in mind, every church graphic should either reinforce the brand and culture of the church or draw attention to or highlight what the church is doing.
In order to do that well, you need to be clear. This means your graphic content should be both easy to read and understand. Here are a few things you should consider when designing your next graphic:
- Is the text too wordy (long lines of text, lack of visual elements, etc.)?
- Is the text hard to read (lack of contrast, ineffective color combinations, etc)?
- Am I using too many different fonts (more than 3 in a single design)?
- Am I using an appropriate amount of space (avoid text taking >60% of the space)?
- Am I scaling my text properly (eyes read largest text first, smallest text last)?
Keeping these factors in mind will help you maintain clear readability and comprehension across all of your designs.
Keep Attention with Consistency
Many people might think repetition is something to avoid in art and design, primarily because it might be perceived as stale or lackluster over time. In actuality, a lack of repetition can make your church graphics feel “cheap” and create visual fatigue for the viewer. Why is it that some people can easily recognize the artist of popular paintings due to the style? Bringing this into modern-day perspective: how can we sometimes tell what company a commercial or ad is for before we even see their product or name appear? The answer is consistency.
Finding ways to incorporate your church’s brand colors, elements, and imagery in every design helps tie them all together into a recognizable pattern. The result is actually scientific; the brain loves patterns. Consistency builds trust. When people see familiar design patterns, they feel safer and more confident engaging with your church.
To do this well, you have to discover what works. Do a few A/B tests, get feedback, and work towards developing your pattern. You’ll, of course, want to avoid having every design look the same. That’s not consistency; that’s monotony. It does not produce interest, and the brain does not like that. For context, here are some examples of brand consistency & patterns:
- Apple
- Huge amounts of negative space
- Clean white/black backgrounds
- Single points of focus/Emphasis on symmetry
- Nike
- Bold typography (all caps)
- Minimal copy/messaging
- High contrast imagery
- Netflix
- Dark backgrounds to make images pop
- Red accent use sparingly, but consistently and intentionally
- Consistent placement of logos and titles
Don’t Forget the Context of the Content
An issue both novice and experienced designers can potentially suffer from is overdesigning. This is the act of doing so much with your design concept that you unintentionally miss the mark. When a viewer sees a design with conflicting or inconsistent messaging, it triggers the same cognitive dissonance that a lack of repetition does. It makes the brain work harder, signaling to the viewer that what they’re looking at is a distraction.
The fix is simple: remember the context of your content. You’ll do yourself and your audience a favor when you work to balance your text, fonts, colors, elements, and imagery into one consistent message. You don’t want to promote your next couples retreat with grunge text, or your next youth event with a script font that belongs on a wedding invitation. Also, avoid using rainbow gradients for a sermon series on spiritual warfare, or images of cash in your “Ways to Give” slide. The bottom line: tone matters.
While the above examples may appear comedic, they make one thing clear: fonts, colors, elements, and images all have a tone. They all say something and invoke different feelings. Your graphics shouldn’t just look nice; they should contribute to the overall message of your design.
There is plenty to learn in terms of graphic design, branding, and communicating well across all media. Even as a volunteer, making even the smallest commitment to improving your knowledge of branding can have a drastic impact on your graphic design abilities (as well as the overall perception of your church). Fixing our design challenges gives everyone an opportunity to engage with us beyond attendance. Strong graphics don’t just invite people in; they help people feel like they belong.
Need help building a church brand that connects? We can help! Hit the Let’s Talk button!