Welcome to The Very Daily Weblog of Joshua Blankenship

Personality begins where comparison ends.
— Karl Lagerfeld

My powers of deductive reasoning tell me Karl is probably talking about fashion, but the same thing goes for your brand. Or your design work. Or your writing. Or your music. Etc.

(In case you missed it, you can read Part 1: The Logo)

Towards the end of the logo design process, I began seriously looking at typefaces to determine what kind of supporting typography would work well for NewSpring Church. I like to think of typefaces in corporate identity as a type of handwriting unique to an individual. One of the constraints this identity package needed to work within was budget. Quality typefaces are often not cheap (and rightly so if they’re well-made), but from a stewardship perspective our budget simply can’t/won’t support more than a handful of font licenses. I wanted a complimentary combo of a solid, modern sans-serif and a functional, ubiquitous serif but knew there had to be some tradeoff involved to get something appropriate and affordable/sustainable.

I researched a number of san-serif typefaces, particularly Hoefler & Frere-Jones’ Whitney which much of the final wordmark was based on. Ultimately, Whitney was a tad too playful and didn’t work as well on-screen for some of our video applications. But when I began using Berthold Akzidenz Grotesk Extended for the “Church” tagline in my logo iterations, something clicked.

It’s still fascinating to me that a typeface released in 1896 can somehow feel fresh today. Crazy Germans and their great typographic legacy. AG has much in common with other realist san-serif typefaces like Helvetica and Univers (both of which were based on it), but a few of the characters, particularly the capital R, led me towards AG when I began the first comps of wayfinding/environment signage for our facilities. In the end, a combination of AG Extended (for all-caps signage applications and AG Super for mixed-case applications started feeling cohesive and appropriate. We bought two 5-CPU licenses for Berthold Akzidenz Grotesk Collection, which includes all weights of the standard, condensed (occasionally used for web graphics) and extended versions. The Communications and Creative Arts teams create most public-facing graphics and visuals for NewSpring Church, so those teams are the only ones who have/use this typeface. That keeps things tidy and within our licensing budget.

Having settled on AG for “the designers” to use, we still needed something ubiquitous/affordable for the rest of our ministry staff to use in common applications like sign-up forms, internal documents, etc. As much as I wish the Communications team controlled everything, I also don’t — we’d never get it all done. The reality of life in a large organization is that this identity needs to make room for non-designers to create visuals in keeping with the visual identity that is being established. Narrowing the type choice down to something free and widely available obviously dramatically decreased the number of options. This is where my web design background actually helped solve a typography issue for once — the font family Lucida can be found on most modern computer systems. As I understand, it’s on all Apple computers with OS X and on most PCs that have Microsoft Word installed, so there’s no purchasing/licensing to deal with.

The Lucida family includes a rarely (at least from my experience) used version called Lucida Fax, a slab serif originally designed for fax sheets. The geometric nature of slab serifs appeals to my general design sensibilities, and worked well in partnership with Akzidenz Grotesk in some of my first typography experiments (which littered my workspace for weeks). Other members of the Communications team undertook the fairly large project of resetting all the internal documents and forms and such in Lucida Fax and making sure it was installed on all the computers at the office. We’ve been coaching our other staff and volunteers to think of Lucida Fax as “the NewSpring font” when creating documents.

The combination of a licensed sans-serif for the designers and a free serif for everyone else saves our church a great deal of money in font licensing, enables us to present a united typographic front in all applications, allows for enough interplay between the two faces to not feel limited and puts certain “design tools” (in the form of templates and a single font) into the hands of untrained ministry-level people so that they can produce visuals that are still in keeping with the NewSpring visual identity.

If I had an unlimited budget, I might have chosen a more-refined serif face (like H&FJ’s cut of Didot they did for Harper’s Bazaar), but that would’ve cost thousands of dollars that we can spend in better ways elsewhere. I think the AG/Lucida Fax combo gets us mostly there, and works within our constraints without cramping our style too much.

Still to come: signage, standards guides, copywriting and the relaunch of www.NewSpring.cc.

This post is the first of a few detailing the 7-month process we went through at NewSpring Church to rework our identity for modernization, scaling at multiple locations and, most importantly, play visual catch-up with who we actually are. I was on staff at NewSpring from ‘02-05ish and the “before” logo was designed and implemented just after my departure. That logo served the church well in the season of transition into permanent facilities and represented the 4-part vision statement of Engage, Enlarge, Endure and Enable, but it was no longer representative of the vibe, culture and personality of NewSpring. This process was an effort to find out who we are and then best represent that visually.

The set-up: I always start out branding work by asking the client for a list of words they think describes them (and then I try to get them to get the same list from their customers, but they hate that because they never see themselves the way others do. See my article on logo/brand perceptions for more on that topic.) Since I was technically both the client and the designer on this project, the key words I started out with were fresh, open, growing, friendly, modern, tight and bold. My direct supervisor Tony Morgan is on our senior management team and handled all the presenting of logo concepts to that team.

As a first phase of exploration (in January I think), I wanted to see if there was something to the 4-E logo that we could simply take and modernize. I started on the icon, with the strategy to move on to typographic updates later if the mark had traction. It didn’t. Fairly early in the process, the senior management began hinting that the 4-E vision statement may change eventually and I didn’t want to go through this process all over again when it did. 4-E icons? Killed. Next?

During my first tenure at NewSpring I tried to establish solid branding based on an “N” icon. In retrospect, it was both too corporate-feeling and not well carried out in all applications. I didn’t know enough about branding to think through what would and wouldn’t work in applications like signage, wayfinding systems, collateral, etc. With a little more experience under my belt, I gave the “N” another go before I tried moving on to completely new concepts. I like both directions shown here, but ultimately, a key desire of the senior management came out after presenting these options: “we don’t want an icon at all.” So, we were going with a wordmark only. The typophile in me rejoiced.

Options 1 and 2 were concepts I felt like could be fully-realized in a large-scale branding effort. The simplicity and repetitive device of the slanted box/line could have uses in print and on screen, especially in regards to cropping photographic and video imagery in the confines of the rigidly-defined box slant. Option 3 was one of a multitude of “clever type” variations of the wordmark that, ultimately, didn’t serve any purpose other than cleverness (and decreased legibility.) Options 4 and 5 just… died. Option 6 was an effort to create a custom typeface, but our relatively short timeline for brand launch (the opening of our second campus in July) didn’t provide enough tweak time and honestly, there are so many fantastically talented typographers far more skilled than me, why even bother trying to create from scratch?

After a presentation of these concepts (and a few others), the other key desire of the decision-makers came to the surface: “we don’t want an icon, but we want something more than just text.” Maddening, right? Less than an icon/wordmark lockup, more than just a wordmark. Somewhere right in the middle was the logo that would stick.

These two logos rose to the top after a number of other presentations of “in-between” concepts. Both had traction with the decision-makers and both had typographic choices I felt like we could work with on a corporate identity/standards level (Whitney for Option 1 and Neutraface for Option 2).

The problem was they were both completely dependent on gradients in order to “read” right. One of the issues with our previous mark was that it turned every print job into a 5-color piece (4-color plus a metallic silver) and increased costs; a gradient logo would do the same, with the added headache of infinite press checks to see if the gradient was getting printed correctly. And even when tightly-managed, gradients can work well for web, on-screen applications and 4-color print jobs but they completely fall apart for branding applications on the outskirts of an organization. What happens to fax cover sheets? Internal documents printed b&w? Nametags printed by our check-in system that only allow for small bitmap images? That didn’t seem tenable or scalable for a church whose budget for graphics isn’t bottomless. I set to work to find another solution and our deadline with signage vendors for outdoors signs was closing in for the Greenville campus. Constraints are inspiring. Mostly.

I was starting to (rightly) fear and loathe the gradient. I hated that I hadn’t found a simple, more timeless, less-trendy solution in keeping with the logomakers I admire. I tried a two-color version of Option 1, with a clear break between the lowercase “g” and the tail, but it made the logo feel harsh and, in all honestly, looked like crap. I loved the typography feel of Option 1 (a heavily-tweaked version of the aforementioned Whitney), so I cut off the tail and started fresh with that wordmark as a base. I quickly landed on the 7 circles that dot the “i.” Utilizing the lowercase “i” dot to make a logo of some variety is clearly an oft-used device and I’m under no allusion that it is in any way original. This new option also ditched the “Church” tagline set in Whitney in favor of Berthold Akzidenz Grotesk Extended — a decision that would eventually set the tone for all our typography and signage.

An early version of this logo was presented at some point, and promptly rejected. Sad.

With deadlines encroaching and the knowledge that “if we were going to rebrand, we had to do it now” or waste thousands of dollars in signage and print collateral at new campuses, a final meeting was set to determine the logo. Options 1 and 2 were presented, in color for the first time (orange-y red, bright blue and light green options.) Also presented was the previously shot-down dotted “i” option. Tony and I decided to include the third option and press hard to sell it, feeling strongly it was the best solution (and that eventually the rest of the senior management would see that as well in the context of the rest of the identity.) That’s what I call back-up and employee cover, managers.

Option 2 was (rightly) deemed too corporate and cold (not too mention too “Welcome to the ancient pyramids of the 4th dynasty, tourists.” I got caught up in exploring the complementary angles of the “w” and the “n” and somehow made a monster.) Option 1 was the front-runner, but a hard sell landed us where we are today. In retrospect, I would have hated life if Option 1 would have won out. The identity options I’ve had with the final logo in terms of wayfinding, typography, a simple color palette for print/screen have been numerous and cohesive. Gradients wouldn’t have allowed that.

Posts will follow on the fallout of that logo decision, including typography, signage, standards guides, copywriting and the relaunch of www.NewSpring.cc. Thanks for playing along.

I’m going to write a few longer posts later this week related to the rebranding process we just went through at NewSpring. Are there any specific questions you have (details or broader strategy)? I’ll try to incorporate some of them.

In about 20 minutes, we’re having our first meeting to discuss the new visual identity and communications standards with some key staff leaders at NewSpring. Should be fun times.

At some point soon, I’ll make these available as PDF downloads.

Have you ever worked on a longterm project? As in putting months of days of (long) hours and thought into making something? It’s a surreal process, and it makes things very difficult to look at objectively.

I started working on new identity concepts for NewSpring Church before I even officially accepted the job, so in reality, I’ve been working on this rebranding for close to nine months. Acts of God and/or appeasement of Godzilla aside, we’re launching the rebrand this coming Sunday, July 13th. We’re also launching a new campus in Greenville, a new message series answering some pointed topical questions and, fingers crossed, the foundation for our new website (with some major 2nd, 3rd and 4th phases after the launch.)

All that to say, posting might be sparse this week, along with sleep, sanity, coherence, the ability to process information and form complete sentences, etc. Of course post-July 13th I’ll actually have some work to show off. A lot of work.

Decent trade-off?

1. Benton Sans
2. Klavika
3. News Gothic
4. Whitney
5. Reservation Wide

I made the decision to come back to NewSpring Church sometime in early November of last year. I actually started work as a paid employee in January. One of my contingencies of returning was that we would begin a very necessary rebranding, and then the main focus would shift to an accompanying ground-up re-strategizing and building of a new website. I think the arbitrarily-assigned estimate I threw out was “seven or eight months,” thinking we could get a good foundation of corporate identity and a new site up in that timeframe, and then start the “real work” of making the new site work for the myriad of messages, ministries and needs we have.

Has it really been almost six months since I started working here?

After a three-month-ish process of presenting more logos than I care to remember, we settled on a new logotype and color scheme. Then came the grunt work of choosing complimentary typeface families (within the constraints of a Church budget), refining icon sets, mapping out and laying out a wayfinding signage system flexible enough to handle multiple locations (the majority of which will be portable locations in the future) but cohesive enough to create an environment that feels branded, designing administrative collateral and dozens of other branding applications, sitemapping and wireframing a site that presented one church in multiple locations.

This week, we’ll put the big bow on a 40+ page Brand Standards Guide and a 10+ page Communications Guide. We’ll send letterhead, envelopes, cards and other printed materials to the press. And in the midst of that, I’ll continue playing massive catch-up with my developer friends working on the mark-up and video player for the www.NewSpring.cc (sneak peek) relaunch. I owe them many Photoshop files.

We’re going to look a lot different in the next few months. I think I’m past the design-second-guessing and back into task-mode, ready for this season to reach its close and make way for the next chapter in how NewSpring Church communicates, looks, feels and interacts with people. I love what I get to do. I hope it all works.

Creative Review Blog has an interesting case study on the recent and equally interesting FaulknerBrowns Architects rebranding. It’s certainly bold and different, but I can’t imagine what a nightmare to implement it is for certain applications.

(You can also see it in context on the FaulknerBrowns website or view more work by A2/SW/HK, the firm responsible for the rebranding.)

Playing off a Seth Godin riff, what would happen if a car manufacturer made a vehicle with no logo on it? How would you, as a consumer, react? Would this somehow be compelling, or do you even care if you pay money to drive around someone else’s advertising?