Rebrand, Relaunch and Refresh

Likely because of the school calendar, September (more so than January), feels like the appropriate time for a fresh start and a new change. Those who call Terra Nova Church their home experienced that in full yesterday. As the design ministry leader for Terra, this is something I had been working towards for months and am thrilled to see come to fruition. Yesterday, September 9th, marked the launch of Terra Nova’s new church plant in Saratoga, NY. Along with this campus launch we felt it was appropriate to give the entire Terra brand a facelift to better reflect the church as a whole.

The original re-brand seed was planted when Jon and I started feeling the need to fully re-structure and re-design Terra’s site. All of the elders agreed that it was time to make this update, but it seemed like it would be a bit anti-climactic without a new brand as the backbone. From a timing perspective, it also made more sense to reveal the brand on the first day of the new campus launch. So we threw out the play book and started from scratch. The main objectives were to create a logo that would feel mature and polished while maintaining the core value that Terra holds fast to: Express the ancient truths in a culturally meaningful way.

Beyond this, my own personal objectives were to stray away from a logo that would require texture, grunge or any other “supportive” elements in order to be effective. I wanted to create a logo that would stand proudly on it’s own while making a statement.

It took a few attempts to get it right (attempt 1 & attempt 2), but after some more focused discussions with the elders we came up with a concept that made sense. We wanted to place emphasis on the “T” (for Terra). The “T” not only resembles a cross, but it also contains a strong and symmetrical shape that can potentially work well across multiple platforms. The styling of the “T” is a modern take on embellishments commonly found in the 19th century. This particular era was important to passively identify ourselves with because of the two particular locations that the church currently meets (Troy & Saratoga, NY). Both of these geographic locations have strong roots that were born in the 19th century so we felt it was important to pay some sort of respect to this in order to really ingrain ourselves in the culture of the area.

With that said, along with the launch of Terra’s new location, we also revealed the new logo as well as a bunch of supporting materials. There is still a lot of work to be done – including the completion of the full site re-design – but for now we have a strong foundation to work from.

We’ve created a temporary splash page to help unify their web presence while we work through the full site redesign. Stay tuned.