My Case Studies
Arbor Road Rebrand
Celebrating a legacy by refocusing a 75-year-old church brand and unifying its ministries.
Rebrand and marketing design for Arbor Road Church in Long Beach, CA. March, 2021 to Present.
Project Context
Timeline: The rebranding process lasted 4 weeks. Updating print and digital designs are ongoing.
Refocus branding for a church in Long Beach, CA.
Responsibilities
Lead Visual Designer
Project Manager
Brand Strategy
Tools used
Adobe Illustrator + Indesign + Photoshop
Google Apps
Project Context
Timeline: The rebranding process lasted 4 weeks. Updating print and digital designs are ongoing.
Refocus branding for a church in Long Beach, CA.
Responsibilities
Lead Visual Designer
Project Manager
Brand Strategy
Tools used
Adobe Illustrator + Indesign + Photoshop
Google Apps
The Goal
Rebrand Arbor Road Church by:
- Updating the logo
- Creating a cohesive style guide with updated typefaces and color palette.
- Updating the website
- Showcasing consistent, high-quality photos
The Goal
Rebrand Arbor Road Church by:
- Updating the logo
- Creating a cohesive style guide with updated typefaces and color palette.
- Updating the website
- Showcasing consistent, high-quality photos
The impact of this project…
As a result of our rebrand, Arbor Road Church received a 200% increase in unique visitors per day to the website using the rebrand.
Keep Reading for In-depth Case Study
How might we honor the legacy of Arbor Road Church and continue to bring value for an inter-generational community?
How might we honor the legacy of Arbor Road Church and continue to bring value for an inter-generational community?
Lead Visual Designer and Project Manager
As the Communications Director at Arbor Road Church, I had my hands in every aspect of this project. I worked closely with our Pastor of Worship and Digital Media to create our new overall look and feel. I prepared ideas for us to choose from and facilitated brainstorming and strategy meetings. Once our vision was off the ground, the execution and fine-tuning was up to me.
Why the Rebrand?
A failing website and loose design guidelines…
During the pandemic, Arbor Road Church adapted as best as possible to the increasing need for digital content and communication. However, the website and its plugins had not been updated in years and small changes to a page caused the whole site to break. We needed the tools to fix our infrastructure or we needed a complete overhaul. Ultimately the website was the catalyst for the rebrand.
Additionally, there had not been anyone guiding the design or branding for digital and print materials. There are 12 ministries underneath the umbrella of Arbor Road Church, and looking at the social media and marketing strategies of each felt like looking at completely different organizations. Since we were working on the website, we wanted to also work on our branding.
Why the Rebrand?
A failing website and loose design guidelines…
During the pandemic, Arbor Road Church adapted as best as possible to the increasing need for digital content and communication. However, the website and its plugins had not been updated in years and small changes to a page caused the whole site to break. We needed the tools to fix our infrastructure or we needed a complete overhaul. Ultimately the website was the catalyst for the rebrand.
Additionally, there had not been anyone guiding the design or branding for digital and print materials. There are 12 ministries underneath the umbrella of Arbor Road Church, and looking at the social media and marketing strategies of each felt like looking at completely different organizations. Since we were working on the website, we wanted to also work on our branding.
Website Redesign
Look for successful design to emulate…
My team assembled inspiring examples of other churches who were of similar or larger size to pull inspiration from. These examples pushed us to think outside of the box. We also broke down the structure of our existing website and weeded out any extra information that was not serving the purpose of Arbor Road Church.
At this point, we chose new fonts and refocused the color palette to use moving forward.
The new website would be primarily for visitors, but would still bring value to current attenders…
- My team worked with a web design company to assemble our vision for the new site.
- I contributed to our strategy meetings for the website moving forward.
- I coordinated content from ministry leaders and prepared the copy for each page of our new website while templates were being created.
- I also gave feedback and worked to follow the project schedule to get our new site launched on time.
Style Guide and Logo
Refocusing the style guide…
I started the rebrand process by consulting the previous style guide and updating it with new fonts and colors that we had chosen for our rebrand. When the new logo was completed and we had solidified our branding decisions, I created a new style guide from top to bottom that included the reasons behind the design, logo variations, best practices, and more.
Logo exploration…
The biggest challenge of this whole project was that Arbor Road Church is a multi-generational community. I wanted a high schooler to identify with our branding and their grandma as well, which is a tall order, but I was up for the challenge.
- I started with drawn and digital sketches to explore different visual styles.
- Throughout this process I conducted guerrilla testing with people from around the office to get a sense of how new ideas would be received.
- I tested 6 designs with 20 people of different age ranges, and a clear winner emerged.
12 Ministry Logos…
In addition to the church logo, I updated the logos for the ministries of Arbor Road Church. These logos would be used in event promotion, social media designs, and printed designs.
Visual Design
Updating print and digital designs…
Once the style guide and rebrand process had been completed, I systematically updated any digital or print designs that were being used throughout the church. I updated any copy and design elements that were used in the designs including the welcome packet, reading plan booklet, and visitor forms.
In addition to print design, I also updated any signage as well as event promotion designs. This included coordinating with photographers within our current attenders and asking for video and photos of our campus and our people. My teammate and I came up with templates that we would use and tweak for promotions, wayfinding, website graphics, etc throughout the year.
Want to see it for yourself?
What I've learned so far...
- Working with a web design company. This was my first time working with a strategy team and with a web designer. My part of the process was to provide feedback and copy for our templates throughout the website, and I made sure to work on these tasks while the templates were being created to keep our project on schedule.
- Ever-changing designs. As the in-house designer, I oversaw the rebrand process from the start, and I continued to maintain and tweak elements of the brand to better communicate our goals. I captured the brand’s current state in a second version of the style guide.