I was approached by People Church about refining the brand for their youth group. The previous logo had worked for the past year, but the group was looking to relaunch their identity and start producing unique content and engagement. This was especially important during spring and summer of 2020 when a lot of students were home quarantining due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The vision: to build a culture that genuinely loves, encourages, and builds up the youth of Chicago.
From the get-go, People Church expressed a desire to push design norms and develop a brand that felt approachable while also feeling fresh. Previous designers had explored logos that hearkened back to the original smiley. logo of the 90s. The youth leaders and I both really liked this direction. The question remained: how do we create a smiley face that looks different than what people are used to seeing? We could change the color? Angle of the smile? Shape of the eyes?
The finished logo uses the words "People Youth" in place of the eyes. This solution kept the part that most liked about a smiley logo (the smile) and introduced something new (the words) that prompted intrigue and-more importantly-brand recognition.
Part of the rebrand included revamping the social media content of People Youth, primarily Instagram. We worked together to develop a look and feel for the content that matched the Chicago vibe.
