The Diocese of Lincoln — the Church of England encompassing Lincolnshire, North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire, had branding eroded by inconsistent use and brand guidelines over a decade old that weren’t fit for modern digital-first use.
In addition to the branding, the Diocese had an ageing website that was slow and inflexible for in-house content editors to manage and was under a service contract due to expire within the year.
We worked alongside a client-side project team to refresh and build the identity into a more complete system and create a new website, beginning with remapping the structure.
From the start of the project, one of the most critical factors for both the branding and the website was accessibility — to reach as many people of all ages as possible. We factored in AA accessibility from the beginning of the brand design phase.
The Diocese’s logo, based on the outline of a gothic church window, was central to the existing identity. Some clergy referenced the logo’s symbolism in their services; its geometry also echoed lit candles and figures with heads bowed.
Whilst this symbol wasn’t particularly well executed, it was used very widely by organisations and branches of the Diocese, such as The Diocesan Board of Education and the College of St Hugh, which have a certain amount of autonomy in using the Diocese’s identity.
We explored various candidate designs, ranging from entirely new logo ideas to evolutions of the existing concept. The latter approach was eventually chosen to retain a visual link to the previous logo, which in some instances will take significant time to replace and to enable its continued use as a narrative tool.
In addition to the logo, colour palette, and typography, we also created a graphic device that implies a cross and allocates space to images, fields of colour, logos, and type within layouts, creating a flexible but recognisable system.
Using the new branding, we built the Diocese’s new website using WordPress and Tailwind, then provided support and training to ensure a successful launch ahead of the end of the support contract on the outgoing website.
The internal teams at the Diocese of Lincoln are delighted with the flexibility of the new website’s CMS; they can easily create pages with a structure to suit the content without having to worry about formatting text or images. This setup starkly contrasts with the rigid template system of the previous site.
What we did:
- Identity design
- Identity guidelines
- Design for print
- Website planning and architecture
- Wireframing
- Website design
- WordPress website development
- Zero-carbon website hosting
