Some thoughts on Church logo design
Church logo design is the delicate balancing of universality with uniqueness. The logo must convey togetherness with the rest of Christianity, but also brand a specific Church. The ultimate goal is to be with God, the message is salvation, but a local Churches' identity needs to be conveyed as well. So how do you bring these seemingly diametrically opposed goals into one simple image?
Another dichotomy is weighing the thousands of years of Church history against today's living faith. How do you create a simple image that communicates both the authority and steadfastness of millennia, and modernity? Timelessness and contemporaneity?
Traditional symbols of christianity are the cross, fish, the eternal flame of the Holy Spirit, water, dove, steeple, the cup, the Holy Book and the Holy Trinity.
Since I have absolutely no experience of logo design and am not a theologian, I picked some examples which I think have successfully achieved this symbiosis.
Good examples
The Church of England has a beautifully simple logo with the cross as the main symbol encompassed by the letter "c", but also by “e”. The "old" character of the logo contrasts with the modern lettering of the name.
The logo of Mariners Church successfully marries water and fire, a modern wave form and the eternal flame of the Holy Spirit.
Bethlehem Baptist Church shows a number of green dots converging towards a cross. The dots form the cross itself. This logo conveys the sense of people uniting to form the church, the light green colour symbolic for the renewed growth in faith, a new life.
Finally, the logo of Christ Church gives a human touch to the cross. 4 simple dabs of hand painted blue.
Bad examples
Plenty of bad example abound. These cheap web 1.0 logo examples are so naive it hurts.
Logo factories will quickly churn out “the cross plus some custom elements, such as a globe, swoosh, the open Bible, etc.” You choose. Click on the logo option when ordering.
Other unfortunate examples: Greater Southside Church logo design. African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church where someone went crazy with 1990s clip art and WordArt 3D effects. By the way, their home page is a wonder to behold.
It is mistaken to want to pack every single symbol you can think of into one logo.
For further reading
Collide Magazine has an article giving a few good principles to consider when designing a Church logo: http://www.collidemagazine.com/article/271/church-logos-the-good-the-bad-the-ugly
