church rebrand CASE STUDY - southside fellowship
Southside Fellowship is a thriving church plant in the heart of Houston, TX serving the Southside neighborhood. Their congregation celebrates much diversity with many young families, single moms, and college students growing in community together. They exist to see fellowship restored with God and neighbor on the Southside of Houston. Their pastor found me on social media and reached out to discuss a rebrand. Their first couple of years in existence was under the umbrella of a church network with a different name and logo. This network no longer exists, so they were in need of a full rebrand, that would celebate their unique DNA and appeal to their specific demographic.
During our Discovery phase, I learned that they are known for their fellowship, love for one another, and time together in gospel community. They take pride in being a church who shows up for each other and does life together. Some of their driving values are: proximity, community, evangelism, family care, and diversity. One of their tag lines is, " Southside. " (Southside period), which speaks to their unwavering, unapologetic mission to pursue and build up this particular geographic location. It's their desire to live missionally, intentionally, strategically, and lovingly on the Southside of Houston.
For the logo mark, we discussed visual direction relating to diversity, the city, the letter "SF", and arrows to communicate proximity and pursuing. Their past color palette was black and white, which we used as a jumping off point. Our goal was for the rebrand to feel urban, young, approachable, creative, and untraditional, authentically aligning with their key demographic.
My first steps of any project are word-mapping different ideas from the brief and the discovery phase. I spend some time researching and gathering inspiration on the particular market or demographic, then start sketching a bunch of quick ideas playing around with shapes and compositions to see what's working. Next I choose a few favorites and bring them into illustrator to vectorize them with more precision.
After further developing some of the logo mark options and building lockups with complimentary typography and color palettes, I presented 3 initial concepts to Southside Fellowship's awesome leadership team. Their 2 co-pastors and their worship pastor had amazing vision and insight for the entire project, giving thoughtful feedback at every round. These guys were honestly dream clients and an absolute joy to work with. Each concept was presented showing a variety of lockups, color ways and photo mockups so that they could get a full picture of what the logo might look like in the real world, in a variety of settings.
During the presentation of the first round of 3 concepts, the pastoral team gave great feedback and direction. With 3 opinions weighing in, it seemed that the consensus was 1 & 3 were the favorites. There was some additional discussion about typefaces and color palette combinations as well. The team had some great foresight in thinking through t-shirt and apparel design potential in the future, as well as what colors to stay away from within their urban context. They also responded very strongly to the elements that felt unique to them like the map pattern and the badges that included "HOU, TEX".
We walked away from round 1 with lots of excitement and a few tweaks to make based on their feedback. They wanted to see a more neutral color palette (with apparel and versatility in mind). I also decided to celebrate and bring to the forefront some of the elements that resonated with them the most like the representations of their neighborhood and the reasoning for each logo mark. I did this primarily through the brand patterns and badge lockups.
FINAL LOGO DESIGN
The final Southside Fellowship brand identity is eye-catching, memorable and timeless. The unique church logo features a blackletter style "S" with a period next to it, made out of broken pieces, representing a diverse mosaic coming together to make something beautiful. The mark is paired with a strong and modern set of typefaces. For the word "Southside", the tight tracking of the letters, links the whole word into one monolithic form that feels bold, unique and balanced. The word "Fellowship" features a touch of that blackletter style while remaining clean and readable.
The main colors of charcoal and sand are a slightly less harsh version of their original black and white, which will translate great to screens, print and apparel. The Southside team resonated with the secondary colors, a neutral yet strong and fashionable palette of almond, mustard, herb, and pumpkin.
The brand identity system has so much versatility, every piece feeling like it could only represent this particular church. This cohesive and responsive set of logo lockups, favicons, badges, and patterns creates a robust package of assets that this thriving, young church can grow into and utilize effectively for years to come.
