The First United Methodist Church of Lawrenceville Branding and Style Guide
TABLE OF CONTENTS
First United Methodist Church of Lawrenceville Branding and Style Guide
Welcome......................................................... 3 Purpose........................................................... 4 Brand Summary.............................................. 5 Name............................................................ 6-7 Mission Statement.......................................... 8 Logos.......................................................... 9-14 Fonts........................................................ 15-16 Colors....................................................... 17-18 Guidelines..................................................... 19 Contact.......................................................... 20 2
Welcome to the Branding and Style Guide
The goal of this guide is to make communications easier and simpler, not more complicated. It is intended to be a resource of information for everyone’s use. Hopefully, this enables the church to answer more questions about who we are rather than creating more questions and confusion. 3
PURPOSE
First United Methodist Church of Lawrenceville Branding and Style Guide
The purpose of this guide is to help anyone communicate or understand the message of the First United Methodist Church of Lawrenceville. In order to do so, this guide establishes guidelines for design and content. The goal is to create a unified and consistent message across all platforms, both internal and external. Like any church, we have a much more important calling than correctly formatting graphics or adhering to font selections.
This means following this guide where possible. It is meant to be more helpful than limiting. These guidelines are not intended to stifle creativity, but rather to guide it.
However, establishing basic guidelines for brand identity helps to make our message easier to communicate and less confusing to understand.
These guidelines are far from exhaustive and should still leave plenty of room for creative thinking and decision making.
Whether we realize it or not, every church has an identifiable brand. This brand is how we are perceived and is synonymous with our reputation.
This guide is for church staff, the congregation or outsiders — anyone who wants to learn about the church and how it is represented.
For that reason, it deserves to be identified and protected.
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BRAND SUMMARY
First United Methodist Church of Lawrenceville Branding and Style Guide
The First United Methodist Church of Lawrenceville is a traditional Methodist Church in the North Georgia Conference. Founded in 1823, the church has been in continuous operation for nearly two centuries. During that time, the church has occupied four different facilities in Lawrenceville, including the current location on West Crogan Street. The Basic Facts: • Denomination: United Methodist • Conference: North Georgia
Note: The above paragraph is what is known as a boilerplate, which is used to give a concise summary of an organization.
• District: Atlanta-Emory • Senior Pastor: Dr. Bill Burch • Founded: 1823 • Address: 395 West Crogan Street • Phone: (770) 963-0386 • Website: www.fumclv.org • Mission: Love God. Love Others. Reach the World.
Feel free to use this paragraph for that very purpose — to give people a snapshot of the church. It already contains all of the important general information about who we are. This is the same basic description that is already being used on the church’s digital media platforms, such as the website and social media.
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NAME
First United Methodist Church of Lawrenceville Branding and Style Guide
Full Name: The First United Methodist Church of Lawrenceville Preferred Abbreviation: FUMC Lawrenceville Preferred Acronym: FUMCLV The church’s full name grounds the church brand in our traditional roots and is a true reflection of the church’s rich history and culture.
The preferred abbreviation of the church name is FUMC Lawrenceville. This significantly shorter name (only seven syllables) can be used interchangeably with the full name.
But let’s be honest: the full name is long — 13 syllables, to be exact. Too long to use in most instances, especially casual conversation.
Even shorter is the preferred acronym FUMCLV. This is used primarily online as the official website URL and social media handles.
For this reason, how each of us refer to the church varies greatly. People call the church by a number of different names and understandably so.
This acronym should be reserved for places that primarily have an insider audience already familiar with the church. Visitors won’t have the proper context to understand what FUMCLV means.
However, we’ve created a consistent naming pattern to set the record straight and clear up any possible confusion.
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NAME USAGE
First United Methodist Church of Lawrenceville Branding and Style Guide
The Bible tells us not to use the Lord’s name in vain. A church’s name isn’t quite as sacred, but sometimes it feels that way. Here’s a list of a couple simple guidelines for how to treat the church name with proper care. • Capitalize each word in the title, except ‘of.’ Eg: First United Methodist Church of Lawrenceville • When including ‘the’ before the full name, do not capitalize (unless at the start of a sentence) • Do not include punctuation within the name. That includes the acronym — so FUMCLV, rather than F.U.M.C.L.V. • The title should not appear in quotation marks. • Do not omit any words from or rearrange the order of the words within the title. • The acronym should only appear in all capitol letters and not in all lowercase letters.
This is not to say that calling the church ‘Lawrenceville First’ or ‘Lawrenceville UMC’ is wrong. Given the long history and wide reach of this church, different people have adapted different names to call the church. That’s understandable. We can’t and shouldn’t try to stop that. However, references to the church’s name on all formal publications and platforms should be as consistent as possible to avoid confusion. It’s just that if we call the church eight different names, newcomers might think of us as eight different churches.
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MISSION STATEMENT
First United Methodist Church of Lawrenceville Branding and Style Guide
Our mission statement is “to make disciples of Jesus Christ who love God, love others and reach the world.” This is based on that of the United Methodist Church which is “to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.” Our mission can be simplified as: Love God. Love Others. Reach the World. This message is the driving purpose behind the church and our programs, actions and decisions.
These words should not be altered or changed from this expression to retain consistency.
It is our goal to closely associate these words with the mission of our church so that all of our members are familiar aware with the mission and understand what it means.
Practically speaking, the three elements of this mission statement refer to a focus on: • Worship — Love God • Small Groups — Love Others • Missions and Outreach — Reach the World
For this reason, it should appear on many, if not most, of the publications and platforms owned and operated by the church.
The mission statement even has its own logo set, which will be discussed in more detail later.
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LOGOS
First United Methodist Church of Lawrenceville Branding and Style Guide
Think of a logo like a stamp that allows everything to be easily identified as being associated with the church. FUMC Lawrenceville is represented primarily by two logos prominently featuring the image of the steeple. The mission statement also has a set of images that are associated with the three components of the mission. Like any brand, FUMC Lawrenceville uses logos as a visual representation of the brand. When used properly, the logo can become an extension of the church.
The church also makes use of a logo that illustrates the mission statement. This logo and its variations should be used primarily in conjunction with the mission where necessary.
FUMC Lawrenceville has two main logos: a modern primary logo and a traditional alternative logo. Both are based on the church name and the iconic steeple image.
There are also a number of various logos from many of the different church ministries and programs, which can be used as needed. None of these logos should be altered in any way in regard to font, color or aspect ratio. This is to preserve their integrity and consistency.
One of these two logos should appear as a dominate graphic mark on all publications representing the church.
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PRIMARY LOGO
First United Methodist Church of Lawrenceville Branding and Style Guide
The primary logo features the church name and mission in the Poppl-Laudatio font family along with the image of the steeple. This more modern looking logo was recently developed to incorporate the church’s mission statement. This logo is the preferred visual representation of the church and should be used when possible, primarily in a horizontal space. To the right are three acceptable color variations of the primary logo: • The first is the original version of the logo, which uses the official church colors. • The second alternative is an inverted color scheme for use on darker backgrounds. • The third is a black and white version.
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SECONDARY LOGO The secondary logo features the church name in Poppl-Laudatio light condensed font with Shelly Volante script. This logo also prominently features the image of the steeple. This version is a more traditional logo with the scripted font and was used in years previous to the current mission statement. This logo can be used in place of the primary logo, especially in a more vertical space. In addition to the full-color version of the logo, the black and white alternative is an acceptable variation. Both versions are shown on to the right.
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First United Methodist Church of Lawrenceville Branding and Style Guide
MISSION LOGOS The church mission of “Love God. Love Others. Reach The World” is illustrated with the various logos shown to the right. Each separate phrase in the mission can be associated with one of the three corresponding symbols and colors: • Love God — Purple Cross • Love Others — Red Heart • Reach the World — Green Hand As you can see, these logos can be arranged in a variety of ways — either grouped or individually and with or without text. These images should be used in conjunction with the mission statement or when a smaller square mark is needed. See page 18 for more information on the colors.
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First United Methodist Church of Lawrenceville Branding and Style Guide
ASSOCIATED LOGOS
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First United Methodist Church of Lawrenceville Branding and Style Guide
LOGO USAGE
First United Methodist Church of Lawrenceville Branding and Style Guide
All of these many church logos should not be altered or changed in any way that would affect the integrity of the original design. • Use the available variations of the logo rather than attempting to change the color scheme. • The size of the logo can be changed freely, as long as the proper aspect ratio is maintained to keep the image from skewing. • Do not rotate, crop or distort the image. • Do not rearrange elements within the logos. • Do not add external elements or backgrounds to any of the logos. • Try to keep the logo as the dominate graphic element on the page. A good rule of thumb is to put it at the top left or top center of a page. • Give the logo enough space to breath — don’t clutter it with other elements or graphics. Photoshop is a really cool and fun program, but please resist the urge to go to crazy with the logos that we took the time to create.
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FONTS Primary Font: Alternative Font: Web Font: Print Font:
First United Methodist Church of Lawrenceville Branding and Style Guide
Cleargothic Adobe Garamond Open Sans Tahoma
Fonts are an important aspect of any brand design. They should be used just as consistently as logos as visual identifiers of a brand. The above fonts are those preferable for usage with the FUMC Lawrenceville brand. These fonts are recommended for use in all publications to maintain a consistent and professional appearance of text. While this does not mean that all other fonts are off-limits, you should try to use fonts that are easily readable and professional in appearance.
Aa Aa Aa Aa
As a general rule, text should be kept between 10 and 12 point size. Headers can have a larger size range depending on the design, but should range around 18 to 32 point. Text should almost exclusively be black in color, except for creative designs such as graphics. Fonts used in the various sermon graphic packages will vary based on the design choice, but should always be specified and documented so that the same font can be used on all related publications during the series.
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FONTS
First United Methodist Church of Lawrenceville Branding and Style Guide
Cleargothic
Adobe Garamond
Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz
Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz
Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz
Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz
Open Sans
Tahoma
Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz
Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz
Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz
Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz
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COLORS
First United Methodist Church of Lawrenceville Branding and Style Guide
The primary church colors are Dark Green and Metallic Gold. These two colors are featured in the primary logos and should be used as often as possible in all official church publications. These are the two colors used in both the primary and secondary church logos. Although there are no rules regarding the application of the colors, they should be used regularly in church media as another element of the church branding and to promote consistency. Dark Green
Metallic Gold
R: 24 G: 69 B: 59 C: 82 M: 0 Y: 64 K: 70 PMS: 567 Web: #18453B
R: 180 G: 151 B: 90 C: 20 M: 30 Y: 70 K: 15 PMS: 872 Web: #A3874A
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COLORS
First United Methodist Church of Lawrenceville Branding and Style Guide
The three elements of the mission statement, Love God. Love Others. Reach the World, each correspond with a symbol and a color. While these colors shouldn’t be used as prevalently as the primary church colors, knowing them can be handy to add a different, more modern color palette, especially in relation to the mission statement.
“Love God” Purple
“Love Others” Red
“Reach the World” Green
R: 41 G: 40 B: 69 C: 40 M: 42 Y: 0 K: 31 Web: #6965AF
R: 86 G: 17 B: 17 C: 0 M: 80 Y: 80 K: 14 Web: #DA2C2B
R: 0 G: 57 B: 26 C: 100 M: 0 Y: 55 K: 43 Web: #019041
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GUIDELINES
First United Methodist Church of Lawrenceville Branding and Style Guide
Now that you have the basic knowledge and tools for communicating the church brand, it’s time to put it all to good use. Here are a few general best practices for how to market a brand effectively. • Keep it simple — if it’s difficult for you to understand, it will be more so for your audience. • Maintain consistency — this helps to keep from confusing others. • Identify your target audience — you can’t reach people if you don’t know who you are reaching out to. • Be open and honest — it helps to explain what you are trying to accomplish • Use good judgement and have a reason for the branding decisions you make.
• Make sure to get other people to proofread everything. Fresh eyes are more likely to catch mistakes you missed. • Find examples of similar projects and try to imitate the aspects you liked while still being original and without plagiarizing. • Don’t be afraid of white space — it actually helps a design look less cluttered. • Establish a metric that measures the effectiveness of communications — otherwise you won’t know if it’s working. • Feel free to ask questions — it’s the best way to identify if something is confusing.
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Thanks for visiting. Hopefully this information answered most of your questions about FUMC Lawrenceville, but if you have any more feel free to contact: Communications Administrator communications@fumclv.org (770) 963-0386, Ext. 146 www.fumclv.org
Updated: 12/09/13