While I’ve held this opinion pretty much forever, as someone who is constantly looking at how, and what, the church is communicating I’m even more aware of it.

I’ve been further cemented in this opinion as I’ve celebrated Easter this year.

It started with a tweet from my friend @mattknisely

Our old history ends with the cross; our new history begins with the resurrection.

I am deeply grateful and amazed that Christ gave his life for me, in awe that he would suffer so that I could live, it is a gift I will never forget. The gift was Christ shedding his blood for me, the cross was just the method. The cross as a symbol indeed represents our history, our old position as unredeemed.

But we are redeemed. Christ is our hope and promise of joy.

As my pastor, Joel Stocker, pointed out in service yesterday:

Satan doesn’t care if you believe that Jesus died on the cross, he wants to keep you from understanding that Jesus is alive.

Think about that. The price was at the cross, the power and promise is in the resurrection. (side note: I could be a preacher…those were all p’s) Anyone could have died on the cross, in fact many did die on crosses. The hope comes in the fact that death couldn’t hold the king.

Rob Bell says it well in a new video that reminds us that death didn’t have the last word. That even in the dark world in which we live, there is light and that light shows us hope. God has not given up on us. We matter to the King.

That is what we should be celebrating and pointing to.

Now that we’ve spent the day celebrating the resurrection, let’s hold on to that spirit of joy and promise all year. May we never forget what Christ did for us, but oh may we never let that be all about a cross and death. That was just the beginning. Let’s spend our efforts pointing people to the hope and promise that Christ gave to us within the power of resurrection.

Editors note: Yep, changed the title and the picture used. I don’t in any way want to come across as degrading of Christ’s death, the price that was paid…but I do hope spend just as much time rejoicing in the joy and promise of the resurrection

But why let him learn all alone? I thought it might be useful to share the journey with you.

The first step is getting to know them. If you’ve heard me talk about logos at all you know that I don’t think a logo needs to just look good, it needs to begin telling the story and showing the personality of the church. This starts with a questionnaire that the church fills out. Some of the questions are typical “what is the story of your church” other’s are a bit more abstract “if the church were being made into a movie, who will play the leading role”…all to dig into the church’s DNA.

Sandi filled theirs out and Ty translated their answers:

All of your core values: unity, outreach, bible based, authenticity, belonging, generosity, grace oriented, maximum impact, family, and christ likeness….are all traits that a “perfect” family wants; to be real, for everyone to feel equal and for the community to see them as so. I feel that the main to point is to be a family, to be of one accord, and really be that hand in a community.

The next step is putting together a mood board which will put this into pictures. Stay tuned.

no coffee maker
no fridge
average rooms

I’d expect 3, maybe 3.5 stars.

But then there are the ducks.

Every day, twice a day there is the “marching of the ducks”. The ducks march in on the red carpet, take a dip in the fountain and then it’s off the elevator for their exit.

And that’s where the 5 stars are born, but it doesn’t stop there..everything in the hotel tells that story and carries the brand. They know what makes them, them. It’s in everything:

The Bathmat

The Employee’s Tie

Everything

So the next time you wonder if your brand is worth the effort…remember the ducks.

“we’re putting your logo in lights”

As Dawn Nicole put it, “it was like watching my kids faces on Christmas.” I was thrilled and excited to see that come together. I was even more excited that my creativity led to someone else pouring out their creativity.

And it didn’t stop there…it was also drawn out in chalk in the cafe, and even given it’s own drink!

That’s how creativity works. It awakes areas of our brain as if to give it permission to explore and venture out. It opens up doors we never saw before. I see it all the time when a pastor allows us to speak creativity into a message; it’s not just about what we do creatively but it sparks new ideas for the pastor as well. I love the look on a pastor’s face as it hits them. They too have that Christmas morning look, ready to run and explore creative ways to bring the gospel.

It’s also a great example of how creativity builds momentum. It started when I poured out my creativity into the logo and continued as others poured out their creativity into bringing it to life in various forms.

And it comes in all shapes in sizes…it even finds its place in the men’s room.

What’s your story of creativity breeding creativity?

Don’t cheat. Don’t scroll down to see the finished……you looked already didn’t you? Okay. Well, walk with me now through how I got there.

The bubble is a good example of why not to start on the computer. The original logo skipped pencil and paper and went right to the computer which results in good but not great. So for the new bubble we turned to pencil and paper. Starting with the existing logo and we came up with something that was similar but with more flair, personality and a bit more bulk.

This was good but what if…what if we went in a different direction with the bubble. What if we used a different shaped bubble, a different angle? All of those questions led to the new mark, a brand new bubble.

There was one more big change to the logo to finish it off. The original logo had the bubble coming out of the front of creative, as if the creative was speaking. We kept this thinking, but now have replaced the dot of the i in creative and the bubble comes out of it. This brings everything together into a tight easily manipulated and reduced mark.

And there you have it, that’s about 30 days of our logo refresh. So we say goodbye old logo, thanks for taking care of us and getting us started. Sleep well.

…and with a few touches to ‘creative’, a couple of touches to the type and fitting things together just right, we have our new…no, refreshed logo:

I hope you enjoyed watching the process and that you learned some things along the way, I know I did. Again, a big thanks to Clint for his fresh take – couldn’t have arrived here without it!

I’ll wrap things up in the final post looking at some of the application of the logo in things like letterhead, fax covers, etc. I’ll also point out some happy accidents I found within the final logo : where’s the cross, did someone ask for a moo, and some fun perspectives of the bubble.

Type was important in the current logo and was what I spent the most time on, but most time in finding just the right one. I wanted something that earned the right to carry a bold and fun name like Holy Cow! Fortunately I found Blambot that has a lot of great fonts…for comic books. But that’s exactly the look and feel I was going for. I already knew I was going to use the talk bubble (we are trying to help you communicate better) so this was a great fit.

But on the original logo, I didn’t mess with it much beyond a few tiny changes. I knew that wasn’t going to be the case this time. One good thing did come from the logo concepts I came up with initially (yes, when I was breaking the rules) and that was to stack the name. Spreading it out was a big reason for the problems when it was reduced. So stacked it was.

But we’re not even close to being done with the type. Now it was time to make it my own. I’m not sure how to walk you through this except to say this was by far the most fun part of this entire process; and while I’m going to show you three stages of refinement, there were hours and pages of refinement. Honestly, not even because it needed that much, but because I really enjoyed finessing the type. Everything got worked, the O and W were worked the most.

I was about wrapped up with the type when a friend who I met through both the HOW Conference and MinistryCOM, Clint Walkingstick, popped his head in and said that he’d be happy to take a look at things. This does NOT mean or give you a green light to show your logo to everyone, get feedback from your friends, etc. I needed this new set of eyes that wasn’t connected so closely to the logo and who could see it more clearly.

A big killer, especially in the world of church, is design by committee. When we work on your logo, we’ll give you ways to bring other opinions into the process. In fact it’s an area I’ll incorporate more and be more purposefully with after going through this logo refresh of my own.

This brought in some great insight, the first was in the type. He gave me a big push towards a hand drawn font, which I really liked. I liked how fun it was, certainly full of personality…but was it too childish?

This was an area where some market research came into play, I put this in front of pastors from various points on the creativity scale. In the end, I liked that it was sassy and playful but because because we work with a variety of church sizes, types, etc. it was bit too playful and in some circles seen as immature.

But there was one element that did connect and made a nice difference to the final type and be on the lookout, Clint and I may be releasing this type as a font, with proceeds going to a charity.

With the type now cleaned up and refined we had one more detail…the exclamation mark. This was actually pretty easy. The process was simple, I threw out the old exclamation mark and drew a new one. Too many times we complicate things unnecessarily. I could have taken the existing type’s exclamation mark and altered it, but I knew what I want it to look like, so I kept it simple and drew it out.

Isn’t type fun? The lesson here is that you should have some fun with it, don’t just take what comes out of the box. Make it your own and make sure it fits your personality and speaks the tone you want it to speak.

Tomorrow….the bubble, a few final touches and the final reveal.

I have now worked with the worse client ever – myself. This has been a very good process for me if for only the simple reminder of what the people and churches we work with go through when we create their new logo. I was reminded of why we design in black and white and add a color study at the end, I felt the need to get everyone’s advice and input and I took the deep breath it takes to commit to a new logo. I walked in your shoes and I think it has made me a better designer and communicator.

The first thing I did was break a rule. I started with the intent of a refresh and ended up with a new mark. Now, in my defense it wasn’t a completely new mark, I was keeping the type and I was keeping our primary mark…in places. See I was bored, I gave my self all sort of liberty and I was trying to find a place to start. And it produced these

Now these are certainly not refined, but I kind of liked them. They were fun, kinda clever and new. Then, I wrote this post and it reminded me that a great mark can grow, but it should never fade away. A logo refresh isn’t about throwing away the old and bringing in the new, it’s about refinement and answering the questions of why you need a refresh in the first place. So back to the drawing board.

Too often a logo is refreshed because we are simply bored with it. After all we’ve been staring at this for over 5 years. Of course there’s also the new logo that catches your eye, “I want something cool like that” you tell yourself. Next thing you know you have a shiny new logo…with none of your DNA. So why did we need to refresh our logo? Were we bored, and since we are a design firm and no money is at stake were we just having fun? Nope. Ok, yes we were, but there were also concrete reasons why the Holy Cow logo needed refreshing.

1. I rushed my own logo process in the beginning. Timing was critical when we launched Holy Cow, I needed a logo, I knew my general direction and I tore off. Now, I like our logo, but it lacks a bit of personality. Holy Cow! is a big name. Even the way people say it (along with my amazing voice mail message by my smoking hot wife) is big and the current logo misses some of that bigness.
2. Besides bringing more personality to the logo the current logo is just a bit…easy. The bubble is one continuous static line, the type is pretty straight from the box. If we’re going to call ourselves the church’s design studio and help you ‘become the most ridiculous creative place on the planet’ we better look like it!
3. I also have a problem with the logo standing out when shrunk down. When I saw it on the cultivate site I thought so even more and that was the final push to begin the refresh 30+ days ago.

So there were my parameters…now it’s time to dig in.

Come back tomorrow as we continue to walk through the refresh. First up…type. In the meantime forward this post, send a tweet, post it to FB…spread the love.

UPDATE
Very interesting comments on Twitter (which I thought I had a plugin that was supposed to add them here, hmmm) about this image.

Here’s a deeper dig into the logos lifespan.

I still stand by the fact that these timelines shows the longevity of Coca~Cola’s mark. An interesting note is their biggest deviation was during the “New Coke” phase which was a huge flop.

For me I walk away with this, especially as I look at a refresh of the Holy Cow logo: you don’t need something completely new just because you’re bored or because you want to keep it fresh. From mark to mark (with the one exception) the core of the mark remained steadfast. There are certainly exceptions, and plenty of times you need to throw out the old to move into the new…but I think this is a good reminder that that shouldn’t be your first move.

That’s why we start every branding and logo project with a somewhat long questionnaire that doesn’t just ask the normal questions, but digs into the personality and story of the church. Often I will have a church tell me they want to reach families, or college students, or increase diversity…but the bottom line is you will be a church for families not when you decide to be, but simply when you are one.

You see, we can develop a campaign that attracts (fill in the blank) but unless you are ready for them, genuinely understand them and serve their specific needs it will simply become an exercise. It is not enough to set the expectations you must, at the very least, fulfill the expectations and to really be recognized blow their mind.

Do you need to dig deeper? Let’s talk.

A couple of guys were asking me about getting the actionchurch logo graphics for tattoos…”

Don Record is doing an amazing job at Action Church…pushing every button and envelope that the church has as they meet at the local nightclub every Sunday morning. When we created the logo we wanted to make sure people related and where drawn to the brand we had developed…never did I think it would be taken to this level.

While it is certainly confirmation that we are doing things right in they way we develop a brand and logo…it’s more so a testament of the culture Don is building at Action Church.