Branding for Oxford church, Oxford Community Church
Branding case study for Oxford Community Church’s new brand identity
As a branding agency in Devon, designing standout branding for businesses in the homes, gardens and interiors space across the UK, we’re sharing a mini-corporate visual identity (CVI) branding project for a church in the centre of Oxford; and one that we were well chuffed with.
After Rach helped Community Church Derby and The Riverside Centre with their branding, Louise got in touch from Oxford Community Church (OCC), asking for some help with a rebrand.
“I was wondering if you had any time to help us out with a logo design for Oxford? We’re looking to rebrand and bring things up to date a bit and don’t feel our old logo works anymore...”
Branding brief for an Oxford church
Louise's colleague, Andy. got in touch with a very detailed brief (gotta love those Oxford types! 😉):
Construct a rebrand around the vision 'Growing communities that bring heaven to earth'
A logo that can stand alone, but also fit within the other spheres of which OCC is part
The shopping list:
Logo
Branding pack (CVI)
PowerPoint templates/palette for Sunday notices
Templates/palette/design for literature (monthly diary, communities, membership)
E-mail template for weekly e-mails
Welcome banner and flags (or external banner)
Initial church brand identity concepts
Rach worked up the initial designs, incorporating key elements of the OCC brand from discussions and briefings.
A hub
Layered elements to create to create one hub like mass, that is sympathetic to the city and the scientific and academic mindsets
Multi-directional
Encompasses the 'up, in and out' elements so important to OCC
Links
A bus route concept that shows a more fluid concept of the communities all over the city
Inter-connections
Layers to create one knot, which represents the life of OCC, as a prayerful and interconnected body, united in its call to reach the city and push out to the fringes
After healthy discussions and positive revisions, Rach delivered the following proofs to the OCC team.
Our thoughts on a brand identity project for an Oxford church
Here are some of the things we enjoyed about the project:
1. Royalty-free images!
To give context to the branding, we used a number of images from Unsplash, which allows you to use high resolution, royalty free images.
We managed to get a smile from Al, who is an Oxford resident, by using an image of Turn Again Lane.
“Double kudos for use of ‘Turn Again Lane’ – I love that name, and the street!”
As we've said before, good images are key to successful branding and websites, so if you've not already discovered it, do check out Unsplash.
2. Logos are living
Rach put a lot of attention into the key brand elements that OCC gave us.
This is because a logo is not, as it were, one dimensional.
It often has to capture a number of concepts of ideas, so needs to be able to be viewed in different ways and from different perspectives.
As such, the 'a + b + c = logo' methodology really helped to bring together a holistic design.
It's not the only way to do it, but sometimes there is more than just one thing that makes for a brand, so this approach is helpful.
And here the 'Turn Again Street' image with logo overlay that Al liked so much!
So that’s a little showcase of a branding project and brand identity for a church in Oxford. If you’d like to learn more from us on branding or get visual inspiration, follow @wildings.studio on Instagram or read more of our blogs on branding below.
