Brookside Community Church
Brookside Community Church
Where diversity is transformed into family.
Brookside is situated within one of the deadliest zip codes in the city of Indianapolis. It is a place where 80% of children live in poverty. A place to where more previously-incarcerated individuals return than anywhere else in the state of Indiana. A place where drugs and sex are sold nightly on the streets.
But there is incredible beauty among the ashes.
Brookside Community Church is a place unlike any other I've ever come across that draws people from very different backgrounds, ethnicities, socioeconomics, ages, and walks of life together into a loving and unified Christ-centered family. Only Jesus could take a hundred-year-old church building and breathe new life into the diverse group that gathers there each and every week.
For this very reason, my wife and I were drawn to make Brookside our home church since before my oldest daughter was born. And so it was an incredible pleasure to work on a comprehensive branding strategy to help take our fledgling urban church plant and usher it into what is now a growing force for good on Indy's near Eastside.
Branding the Church
Brokenness – that which not only defines the neighborhood, but is what each of us brings to the table in encountering God – is what ultimately inspired the design and brand motif. The resulting mosaic brandmark was fashioned after the physical map of the neighborhood. The broken pieces that make up the icon represent the deep brokenness we all share, shapes of all colors and sizes that Christ has beautifully pieced together to form His family.
Branding Brookside's outreach initiatives
The story of Brookside extends beyond the church itself and into how the church engages with its neighborhood. Three outreach initiatives have been launched to bring hope and renewal to individuals, kids, and families residing in the Brookside neighborhood: Reentry, Play, and Housing.
I retooled the mosaic design to represent each area of ministry targeted by these initiatives and introduced a secondary color palette to help identify the various sub-brands.
Reentry
Brookside Reentry helps previously incarcerated men and women get back on their feet and find a loving and caring community that will walk alongside them in the process.
Play
Brookside Play helps kids bounce back from emotional trauma and academic failure through the power of play rather than additional tutoring.
Housing
Brookside Housing provides fair housing opportunities for individuals and families to move toward stability along with community support for long-term development and success.
Branding Brookside's non-profit CDC
The church wisely formed a separate non-profit to head up each of the outreach initiatives and employ a model that can scale as the ministries grow. Taking elements of all three initiative brandmarks, I was able to create a new mosaic that encircles a solid outline of the neighborhood while retaining the look and feel of the other logo designs.
Business Set Designs
Service Cards and Apparel
Website Design
Putting Brookside on the web was a major goal from the start, as there was originally no live site. Working together with Brookside's pastor, I devised a simple sitemap, navigation hierarchy, and page layout wireframes. From there, we obtained custom photography from a few local volunteers, and I set to work on designing and building the site on a platform that offered staff a very user-friendly means of content management so they could take the reigns of maintaining the site once everything was finished.
“Jeff has been a major influencer in the branding and language used in the infancy stages of our church and nonprofit. He came, he listened, asked great questions, and personally invested himself in helping us build a brand that communicates the message and mission in a way we could not have on our own. He was timely and patient with a very understaffed church, but continued to push us to finish and launch. We love the work Jeff has done for us and know that this branding will only allow us to continue to spread the good news to the poor as we press on in our ministry.”
