Initiating a Church Newsletter.

Where to begin when you are designing a church newsletter?  I am going to be finishing up a church newsletter for The Plant that I have “story boarded,” so to speak, outlined, and I am ready to GIMP and Scribus it away.

These are the steps I have been following to come to my final design concept.

1) Keep your branding.  Branding is so important to creating a cohesive, unified symbol of a church community.  The newsletter should share branding with the website, the pew cards, the stationary, etc.  If everything looks different it just turns cheesy.

2) Look at other examples.  Church newsletters can run the gambit from spruced up letter to blown out magazine.  It varies.  Find some you like and…

3) Choose a mode that fits your community’s culture.  Your newsletter should be an example of your church.  The product should reflect the zeitgeist of the church community.

4) Open Source it.  Let church members have the opportunity to send pictures or stories to you for inclusion in the newsletter.

5) Design away…

We’ll find out if they work right!