Saint John’s Branding, Walthamstow Church Logo Design
Walthamstow, London, UK
Project
Saint John’s Church in Walthamstow is an Anglican church that sits prominently in a highly populated, varied community including the well known Warner estate. The church community were looking to improve their visual output to a level that matched the work they do in the community and their future ambitions.
Solution
The church is far more than a building, it is the people who build it and the community it serves. I worked alongside the community of St. John’s to design assets inspired by former local, William Morris. Bringing the design together I created a Trinity-foil logo mark supported by additional assets developed by the church community.
Walthamstow is in the grip of rapid gentrification and the pressures that brings, new, wealthier professionals purchasing quality housing stock, many in the well known Warner Estate, mixing with long time residents. Saint John’s is well known as a community hub, running sports, daily, toddler and women’s events as well as hosting groups such as the Scouts. With further ambitions to extend their impact in the community, the church wanted to improve their visual look and feel to match this ambition. I was keen to get the church population involved, so alongside the logo I developed, I led a lino printing project with the congregation. Inspired by a rather well known former local, artist and polymath William Morris, we worked together to create patterns that could be folded into the brand. With the branding, we also identified a unique URL for the church to use that played on the Walthamstow connection, using the .ws TLD (top-level domain). stjohns.ws.
Animated Social Media post example
Walthamstow is a place that oozes with history, lots of that is creative. Contemporary artist Grayson Perry calls it home and until recently had a studio in the borough. 90’s Festive pop ballad supremo’s E17 took their name from the Walthamstow postcode of their home town and Arts and Crafts visionary William Morris lived locally and his former family home now hosts the William Morris Gallery. It was to Morris that I looked when considering the typography. Morris set up the Kelmscott Press, who produced some exceptional work on books such as the Kelmscott Chaucer edition of the poets’ complete works (which often gets named just after the Guttenberg Bible as all-time outstanding typographical achievements). The Kelmscott Press created Golden Type, a font based on the work of engraver and printer Nicolas Jenson in Venice around 1470. The main wordmark is set in a slightly modified Jenson Pro from Adobe, with added NT ligature and a few letter adjustments to make the overall design more coherent. The holding quatrefoil shape comes from elements in the architecture of the rose window at the front of the church. The rose window is a very visible element on the building, but churches aren’t about buildings really, they’re about people, so for additional branding elements, I was keen to explore the community aspect more.
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