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St. THOMAS Brand identity and WEB design concept

Revitalizing a traditional Catholic parish

Client ST. thomas the apostle catholic church

THE CHALLENGE

St. Thomas the Apostle is a Catholic parish in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Churches like St. Thomas are always seeking to evangelize (read: "market") more effectively. It was time to refresh their brand identity to adapt to changes, and to sustain the parish's mission.

THE GOAL

Simplify the St. Thomas mission. Re-design their logo to convey a cleaner, more modern brand image. And, to develop a website that will help St. Thomas expand their parishioner base and more effectively engage current parishioners.

Our approach

St. Thomas the Apostle already has a strong vision statement, and an identity that comes from functioning as a staple of the Catholic community in Ann Arbor for over one hundred years. This makes our job easier. Visiting the parish, speaking with parishioners, reading and re-reading the parish vision statement—these things formed the bulk of our research in preparing for logo design, mission statement re-tooling, and web design.

We designed the new St. Thomas logo concept with clean lines and updated the green to a more modern shade that will display well across formats. The concept is modeled after St. Thomas the Apostle's traditional coat of arms.
Our Union Stories advertisement

Catholic parishes always have a patron saint that helps form the core of their identity and mission. At St. Thomas the Apostle Church, that saint is Saint Thomas the apostle. Saint Thomas is said to have built a church with his own hands, in India. Later, he was persecuted there and was killed with a spear by a pagan priest. One representation of his coat of arms reflects that. We took that old image and updated as a modern church logo.

St. Thomas already has a very strong vision statement, so it was just a matter of abridging it slightly to make it a little more actionable and memorable. In our web concept, it serves as a central piece of information about the parish.
Our Union Stories advertisement

We also pulled a strong and simple mission statement from St. Thomas' expanded vision statement, to keep it more memorable and actionable. It is critical that an organization develop something like a mission statement—along with other items are equally valuable in our brand and identity work: values, strategic objectives, brand philosophy, core value proposition, etc.—before beginning logo design. Not only does a mission provide organizational focus, it provides key information about how a brand should be established and develop over time.

The bulk of our proposal for St. Thomas included a new web design. After looking at the St. Thomas online presence, as well as area competitors, the biggest threat to online recruiting had to do with web design. Local search results for keywords like "church services near me" or "sunday church services" or "churches in ann arbor" are dominated by Protestant churches. These churches do a better job of designing, presenting information in a well-structured manner, and updating sites in a methodical way to reflect their evolving efforts.

It is obvious that churches like St. Thomas that want to compete should start with an updated website that includes:

  • SEO metadata and proper site tagging
  • On-page SEO and strong sales copywriting
  • Large-format high-resolution imagery
  • Structured navigation and overall site organization
  • Logical calls to action on key pages
The St. Thomas the Apostle website concept is designed to effectively convert three different audiences into engaged members of the parish community: new converts, fallen-away Catholics, and longtime parish members.
Our Union Stories advertisement

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