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I’ve already written about this topic (see: Copying Doesn’t Hurt Me, It Hurts You) but I want to look at it from a different angle.
Our church website is copied a lot. I’m not saying that in a prideful manner, but simply as a stated fact. I get a “hey, this looks familiar” email at least once a week. As a Christian and a church staffer, I’m mostly on board with it—”same team” we often say. There’s no competitive advantage for us to have a unique website, because this isn’t the marketplace; we’re not competing with other churches. We want to see them succeed. But as a designer, as someone who is passionate about clear communications, it makes me sad.
When you copy an existing site you probably get a decent end-product, but you don’t know why. This is about more than copying design/visual cues, it concerns me to see churches borrowing copywriting style and information architecture. Why? Because you’re borrowing a voice and thought process that isn’t you. When I see a site with the same user flow as ours, all I can think is, “you don’t know why we did that. Your people are probably different.” The way we’re structured, the way we communicate and plan events, the kind of things our communicator(s) say, they’re all different than you. Not better, just different.
But if you homogenize the end-product without understanding the process that led to the original, your website will reflect who you actually are less and less. You’ll keep being you in person, because you can’t help it. But your website will be someone else. And that dissonance is eventually perceivable. A website is the first impression most people have of you; will their physical interactions with your brand feel like the same thing?
Just be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.
— Oscar Wilde
By all means, look at others to learn. Ask questions. But ask the right questions. Ask why something is the way it is, don’t just accept it as globally good. Don’t just look at our website (or anyone else’s) and copy it. They’re not you. And being you at every touchpoint is far more valuable than having a slick website.
I wonder about this when I read tutorials teaching readers “how to design a great website.” Most of these show you what photoshop filters to use, how to layer cool textures to create a trendy background, how to get that cool jQuery slider effect to work, etc. Rarely do any of these tutorials explain why certain design decisions were made, and if they do, they almost never give a real backstory of who the target audience is (unless, of course, they are trying to justify not supporting IE 6).
It makes me think that this type of thought process carries over when it comes to copying others’ websites. Copy-cats are looking for the visual cues (the colours, the textures, etc), because that is how they are taught to approach web design.
I admit fully that I’m guilty of this, searching through design galleries looking for “inspiration.” I want to learn more about information architecture, about thinking through the full process of determining what the message is and how to communicate it, but am not sure where to start. Any suggestions?
said Pat
at 2:42pm on Monday
The key problem with most of the rest of us, is that we don’t necessarily have the right kind of talent to mine from. I personally am a volunteer for my church, & there’s nothing I want more than to have an original web presence that wreaks of who we are, but I/we don’t have the resources. I’m not even sure i understand information architecture. So if you have some recommendations for workflow & establishing the correct “information architecture,” please share! I gotta say, it can be pretty disconcerting trying to learn from the church design world. I see a lot of awesome things being done, but not many are open to helping the rest of us, because, as you say… We’re on the same team. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating lazy plagiarism. I’m just sayin’.
said Justin
at 5:06pm on Monday
I know so very little I should probably not even respond; however, fools rush in as they say…
UNLEASH (communications/web design sections) might give you a bit of what you are looking for, and you can find it live 2010, or the previous years archived at NewSpring.cc.
However, the site blogger to whom you responded is one whale of a guy (prejudice aside) who shares knowledge unabashedly…on the same team and all…and if you are “not sure where to start,” and though it “can be pretty disconcerting trying to learn from the church design world,” you will not find it so in his.
said Mom
at 10:34pm on Monday
Copying design(eg. button images and color-scheme) is bad.
Site format (eg. Navigation) takes experimenting and iteration, however, and it can be useful to have a place to start. In addition, many churches don’t have someone who knows how to cook up a javascript,smooth slideshow.
If you have ever tried to navigate a truly badly thought-out site, you know it can be very frustrating. The first step is fixing/replacing those.
said The Maw
at 10:57pm on Monday
This is embarrassing, but I just went to click the “like” button… Haha. So now I’m writing a “good post” message.
said Brooke Novak
at 3:40am on Tuesday
I wrote about this on my blog as an aspect of the “diffusion of contemporary church culture”
http://praxishabitus.blogspot.com/2009/09/instant-cool-explaining-diffusion-of.html
said Gerardo Marti
at 11:03am on Thursday
Thanks for putting into words what I’ve only thought. It seems a lot of churches are taking the same package and putting a different bow. Not their wrapping and bow, though.
said Alan
at 12:10pm on Thursday
I’ve seen that as I’ve come across varying church websites, and I sometimes wonder if it has to do with seeing something they like, but not knowing how to design it themselves.
I also wonder if there are only so many basic themes out there, that even tweaking them will lead to what you think is a 100% custom theme, actaully looking very similar to another theme that you have never come across.
Otherwise it is just laziness. But not all churches have a budget that allows for a web developer to design a website for them, so they find something they can probably tweak, and use that rather than get someone in to design it for them.
said Andrew
at 12:21am on Friday
I wonder where the line is between copying and simply seeking inspiration. I have noticed that musicians have no problem with listening to other musicians and if they hear something they like they incorporate it into how they do things. Not only is this accepted, it is expected in music. The same is true is so many other creative ventures. Yet, there seems to be a disconnect in web design and perhaps even with graphic design itself. Now, I am not saying that this was the intent of the author. But, at the same time, this article does not seem to leave the door open to seek inspiration from other people’s creations. I am not a web designer, or a graphic designer, I am a pastor. As such I am constantly looking for how other pastors do things. I currently lead the children’s service at my church and I have spent many hours looking at other churches children’s programs to see how they do it. Someone coming into the service I lead might see some element and have the same sense of familiarity that you mentioned.
Now, I think that what you are talking about is copying all, or a major part of another site as your own. I agree that this does not give an accurate reflection of who you are or the character of your church. However, I wasn’t clear on your view of taking elements that you like from a given website, and using them along with your own thoughts, to create a site that does reflect who you are and the character of your church.
said Matt Norman
at 9:45am on Monday
Hi Joshua,
Great post! I’d love for a deeper discussion of this trend toward copying design. This is obviously not a new thing in design, but what impact does it have on the Church? I’m Catholic and most of the time I regard most Catholic Church design to be horrible or non-existent. And yet there are design trends even within the Catholic church, and they tend to reside in using Comic Sans or Papyrus for the church bulletin.
This presents a problem. A lot of church’s cannot afford to hire full-time designers, let alone branding consultants. So when a competent volunteer arrives to redesign a website or bulletin, they might tend to copy existing standards. These standards might be considered good or bad design, but ultimately they replicate what is already considered the norm. If I copied the “modern” Church’s design practices, they might seem new or revolutionary in the Catholic Church, but if I was to design the same website or logo at an “emerging” church, it might seem overdone or not unique.
I have never worked with a client who wants to be exactly like another brand, but I’ve also never worked with a client who doesn’t want to copy or emulate another design. They see success and they want to follow that success, especially if that Church, business, etc. is in the same demographic as their own.
Where does uniqueness trump proven successes? As someone who never formally studied design, I would love to come up with a unique and successful design, but I realize what has worked well for me and my clients is to take bits and pieces from design trends and mix them together to create something not truly unique but not wholly unoriginal.
I would love to rebrand every Catholic church, but is it a desire for that brand to reflect the community, or to create new branding that helps the community be seen differently. Maybe it’s a little bit of both.
Good luck with the discussion and helping move Church branding forward.
said Ryan Miller
at 1:44pm on Monday
Doesn’t it make sense that a lot of churches have similar information architecture? We have a lot of similar content! I’m the lead designer on staff at V21 in Raleigh, NC, and after a lot of stressing over coming up with something unique when I was working on the verbiage for our most recent relaunch I realized… why reinvent the wheel? I just want people who visit the site to find what they’re looking for!
said Amy Jones
at 9:42am on Wednesday
Possibly, but there’s a huge difference between “similar content” and “the exact same site map.”
One of the things I’m often surprised by is how surprised other churches are to find that we don’t have a lot of events and goings on outside of the main services and student ministry. That simplicity affords us a good bit of freedom in simplifying the site itself, since there isn’t as much to communicate. But if a typical church, who has a multitude of events during the week, cops our site and architecture, they will very quickly find themselves without enough places to put things.
I think it’s a myth to say “all churches are pretty much the same” because it’s just not even close to being true.
said Joshua