Dream Boulder
Content creation, design, and communication coordination for a successful capital-raising campaign for Cornerstone Church.
Project Overview
The Dream Boulder campaign was a chance to take advantage of changes happening within the church and to position the church for greater ownership of its members while also becoming strategic about its role in the greater Boulder community.
For me, it was a great opportunity to finish my role at the church with a project that would clarify their communication systems and establish a more cohesive identity moving forward.
Mind-mapping the scope of the Dream Boulder project.
Outline of My Work
- Copywriting and Tone
- We chose to use our typical, open, pastoral tone in our communications. Cornerstone prides itself on being open and honest, so the balance was to be clear about the ask for money as well as sharing the inspiration and vision that we felt made the financial sacrifice worthwhile.
- I wrote the copy for the brochure, the website, the weekly newsletter, and several of the video script/outlines. I was also often a sounding board for the pastors as they would prepare their messages.
- The pastors told me how much they hated asking for money from their people, so I asked them why they still felt the need to ask if they hated it so much? I then tied their responses in to the themes we had outlined in our mind-mapping session.
- Overall Design Look
- We chose to use a blue and white color scheme to keep things simple and give good contrast. Blue is also typically associated with both inspiration as well as stability/trustworthiness, so it made a good color to use psychologically.
- The pastors asked for as much imagery to suggest Boulder County as possible, so I used much of my own photography for background images on the video wall, sermon slides, and booklet pages.
- Website
- I designed another website that was a child to Cornerstone’s main website while also accessible through its own domain name. This website was a secure portal through which they could give directly to the One Fund as well as a place for us to display our short-form and long-form video messages, a digital copy of the booklet, and further updates and information as the project progressed.
- Print Materials
- I created a booklet that gave an overview of the purpose and plan behind the Dream Boulder campaign that would stay relevant throughout the course of the 2-year project. This was a challenge to include relevant information that would address questions that givers might have while still being accurate as the project moved through its stages.
- There were also several signs/banners/postcards that we printed over the course of the project that needed to remain consistent with the rest of the campaign’s look. The most difficult aspect of this was the white logo, which needed some sort of dark background in order to print properly.
- I was in regular communication with professional printers for both our booklets as well as large-scale poster, vinyl, and magnetic prints we made.
- Asset Management
- We had to keep any imagery that we used because I never knew when we might run out of printed materials or when we might want some kind of update card or pamphlet for print.
- I kept an asset library that had the high-res images and design files as well as sub-folders (and appropriately named files) filled with the flattened, scaled versions for projection, video screen, print, web, and email.
Takeaways
This project was an incredible chance for me to finish my time at Cornerstone well. I’m genuinely proud of everything that I did. Even when my design choices weren’t the ones we went with, it was because I was working with a team who was happy with the way that things looked.
There’s a lot that I would change design-wise (because, well, I’m always wanting to do a new design) but the main point of design is to facilitate the exchange of ideas and emotions the design is meant to convey. The Dream Boulder project was a huge success, raising the necessary funds and creating a much more involved and engaged community.
That’s a huge win.