It’s Been a Crazy Six Months

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.