Logo for church moving from stodgy to edgy

Oakdale

Olney (or Clarksburg)

Yes

Oakdale is a church with a long, 214-year history in Olney, Maryland (a commuter suburb of Washington, D.C.), and a long official name—Oakdale Emory United Methodist Church. Both Olney and Clarksburg (where we opened our first multi-site campus last fall) are affluent, highly educated communities comprised predominantly of families with children. In addition to appealing to this primary target audience, our goal is to attract more un-churched or de-churched people, especially young adults in their 20s and 30s. Our core values are: Real, Relational & Fun.

Our first logo (see attached file) was designed for our Web site in 2008. A change/rebranding is overdue! Among the specific problems we are experiencing:

(1) The original logo incorporated the full name in a three-level hierarchy: Oakdale//Emory//United Methodist Church. In 2014, when we launched in Clarksburg, a church member who is a graphic designer “tweaked” the logo (see attached file), substituting the two location names—Olney and Clarksburg—in place of “Emory,” and replacing the United Methodist Church tagline with our mission statement: Taking the Gospel Into All of Life. In daily usage, we refer to the two campuses as Oakdale Olney and Oakdale Clarksburg. The new logo should be able to accommodate the length of either name (and that of other sites we might open in the future) but the main focus of the logo should be just “Oakdale” (possibly with an iconic “O”) but certainly with a simple, distinctive, stand-alone, social-media friendly icon to represent the overall Oakdale brand.

(2) The original oak tree logo suggests maturity (perception: old age?) and deep roots (perception: tradition-bound?), although the leaves apparently were intended to signify people “going out” into the world. Visually, we would like to move away from any sense of “Stay!” and instead convey a “Go!” message much more strongly and clearly in a new logo. Our mission statement “Taking the Gospel into All of Life” does not need to be incorporated into the logo itself, but we are thinking the new logo would convey movement. We’ve discussed in-house the idea of a round “O” with a world globe inside and a cross sweeping across it. While it might be interesting to see if this could be rendered simply, we don’t want to be prescriptive or tie designers’ hands; our main desire is to have lots of other creative ideas emerge from this contest.

(3) The original logo, with its intricate details and serif fonts, functions better as letterhead than a true logo. It is especially problematic to make a square “icon” for digital/social media. (The way the K and the tree are designed, we cannot even crop in on just that part effectively). The new logo should be simple and bold.

Oakdale is not bleeding or cutting edge, but we are definitely in the process of moving from stodgy toward edgy.

Religion and Spirituality