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Project
Grace Church Hammersmith were looking for a brand that would support their mission of “Gods Word, Gods People, Gods Mission”. They were keen to create a professional, eye-catching brand with a contemporary feeling. The design should still recognisable as “a church”. The brand needed to suit the location and be flexible enough to be applied across digital and print assets.
Solution
The final design is anchored by a stylised set of brackets that reflect local landmark; Hammersmith Bridge and reflecting the history of both the local area and the faith itself. Flexible and adaptable allowing the team to easily create marketing and social assets within the brand style.
During the research of Hammersmith, I recalled a story of Doves Type. This coincided with a decision to avoid a geometric sans type in preference to a serif font. A serif type would also recall the important history that the printing press made in the creation of the modern western Christian faith by bringing the Bible to more people in a language they could understand. Doves Press was established in 1900 by the banks of the River Thames in Hammersmith by Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson and Emery Walker. The press created Doves Roman, a break with the fashion for decorative, overwrought facsimiles of Morris’s Arts and Crafts style.
A page from the “Doves Bible”.
Doves Press created some of the era’s best books, including the Doves Bible. But dramatically by 1916, having tossed the punches and matrices into the Thames (from Hammersmith Bridge) three years earlier, Cobden-Sanderson began the systematic destruction of the entire Doves Press fount. The reproduced Doves Type, created from rescued type dragged from the Thames mud, formed the core of the Grace Church brand. Further keeping with the Hammersmith theme, the colours were inspired by the works of Victor Pasmore painted in and around the river Thames and Hammersmith. Do check out the church web page at Grace Church Hammersmith.
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