Communication Revolution, Part 2: Logos

Awhile ago I started the first post in a series on the "Communications Revolution" taking place at Park. That was back in April... it's now June... so I've either been working very hard or have been very lazy! :-)

Anyway, one of the first things that I wanted to tackle at Park was our logo. This was it:

Now, it's not a terrible logo by any means, it's a good logo. But in the context of our surroundings (downtown Chicago) it didn't fit and it didn't feel like "us."

Having read The Brad Gap, I've come to understand that a brand isn't a logo or icon or whatever you want to call it, it's the feeling people get when they hear about your church/organization. Your logo/icon simply supposed to be a reflection of who you are.

Well, I wasn't sure what a leaf had to do with us or how that represented us. Sure, there are some Christian themes there: growth, new life, etc... but it's just soooo suburban looking.

The "leaf" was also designed at a point in Park's history where they met solely in Lincoln Park... so that made more sense... parks, trees, leaves, etc.

But, it's a new day in the life of Park. While we will continue to have a presence in Lincoln Park, we are now in the River North neighborhood and eventually hope to expand and add campuses across the city. So, we needed a logo to reflect a church for the city... and so the madness began.

We hired out a company to try to help us out... 20 logo concepts later we canned the project. Nothing seemed to fit. We didn't want something religious looking, but things that didn't have religious imagery looked like any other logo that's out there. We wanted something unique.

We had a couple of designers work on ideas for us and again, great logos, but nothing that everyone involved in the decision making process could agree upon.

Then we found Kyle. Well, we found Kyle via the company we hired out to do our website (more on that later)... he's a talented designer and he decided to take on the challenge of designing a logo for us.

He sent us two concepts and we fell in love with this one:

There were a couple of issues with it, though.

We loved the 'dot matrix' feel... very forward. We weren't down with 'park' being lowercase... it seems a bit informal... I loved that it didn't say 'community church', but people protested. And while it was a solid design, the problem was there wasn't anything unique about it that would communicate to the outside world that we were a a church. It could have been a restaurant, a condo building, a hotel...

So, with a little help from the Church Marketing Lab we worked with some different ideas and came up with this:

And then we had a winner.

I love the futuristic, dot matrix feel of this... that it's the city skyline in an abstract way... that the cross is subtle (but that it's there!)... and that it really conveys the message of our church... we want to glorify God in the city... we want to stand out and be different.

Initial feedback from people around here has been incredibly positive and the new logo officially debuts to our congregation tomorrow morning at our first service in our new building!!!

Here are some example of how we've used the logo:

Comments

[Cody]

The Logo is freaking amazing!

I love it.

[Nate Williams]

Love the new look. It feels very current, yet seems like it will stand the test of time. Thanks for sharing your process.

[website designing]

Designing the professional logo a bit hard, but it is the thing of having creative mind....

[James Liew]

Very good. I like it. It has a designer and corporate feel to it.

[Just Meee~]

I LOVE your new logo! At first reading, seeing the leaf... I was thinking LAME ! ! But as your message continued... and it grew and grew to be GREAT ! ! ! ! Very wise to keep going till it just felt right! FREAKING FANTASTIC !

[Todd Ruth]

At first when I saw the logo at the top of this post I was like... it's ok. But when I see it as it's worked out... you guys got a rockin logo. Love it.

[josh lanning]

That logo would attract me to look further into what your church is doing in the city. And when you look into the logo - i love that you see the cross inside the city in such a way that it complements the skyline.