I created the corporate identity for Kernersville Community Church (KCC) in 2007 to reflect the infancy of a new vision, coming from new leadership in the church. KCC was originally planted over a decade ago, but a new, younger pastor with a new vision came to the church 3 years ago. The original identity was never correctly implemented, and the church desperately needed a cohesive brand to unite under. I designed the 2007 identity to reflect the vision of the church: outward focused, warm and friendly atmosphere.You can see the 2007 KCC identity here.  I used vintage tones and lots of gradients to impart a warmth to the look, while also paying visual homage to history and age.  KCC has been around a while, and the identity needed to reflect that, while also making a clear shift to outward thinking, using the cityscape and houses to communicate that.

Over the course of two years, the vision has been further refined, and because KCC is essentially a “replant” of a church, the “culture” of the church has changed drastically over two years.  I helped redesign the interior of the church, bringing in modern colors and lighting to the space, and the church is now doing lots of outreach.  In addition, the style of the meetings has changed to a cutting edge experience.  It became clear to me that my 2007 identity had quickly become outdated.  Normally a brand/identity will last much longer than two years, but in special cases, an identity can become outdated if the vision, mission, values or corporate culture of the organization change in large measure.  In KCC’s case, the corporate culture changed enough to cause a disconnect with the identity.  What KCC needed was not a redesign; rather a realign was the best option because the core vision and values had not changed; just the atmosphere of the church.

I kept the basic premise of the brand intact, but updated the typography, adjusted the color scheme and proportions to show a more cutting-edge, modern aesthetic, along with more aggression.  KCC is a church with a lot of forward motion, so the new identity had to reflect that.

The logotype was originally Myriad Pro with Garamond Premier Pro as the subtitle.  They had been chosen for a clean-but-creative look.  For the realigned identity, I chose Bree Extra Bold Oblique for the title and Zapatista for the subtitle.  Bree is a typeface with a pleasing upright-italic feel that exhibits lots of creative flair—KCC has lots of artists and a public art gallery in its building—and Zapatista is an aggressive grungy typewriter font.  I proportioned everything inside the Golden Ratio (a.k.a. Divine Ratio) to show a sense of order amid all the gutteral grunge treatments.  I also removed the vintage surround of the identity to demonstrate the shift from history to future.

My 2007 (top) and 2009 (bottom) logos

The realigned identity is being implemented slowly, as needs arise. This is done to keep costs down for this [essentially] young church.