If you think donuts are the bomb, make sure they have a spot in your bulletin. If you love generosity as a church, celebrate it in your bulletin. And that is okay! Embrace who your church is and communicate the best parts of it through your bulletin. Other churches are awesome, but you will never be them. Regularly re-evaluate what is going in your bulletin to make sure it's actually a successful communications tool. Why should someone read your bulletin? If the content isn't timely or well laid out, then it isn't helpful. If it is evergreen content (not time sensitive), review it once a quarter for any needed changes. Give it a little rewrite if it needs to appear more than one week in a row. If content is time-sensitive, never leave the same content in your bulletin for more than a week. If you have the room, fill up the whole page with it. Perhaps enlarge an important piece of text, like a church tagline or a mission statement. But, always remember to stay consistent and only use colors from your brand pallete. This could be an interesting crop of the logo, or a pattern based off of shapes in your logo. Use elements from or inspired by your church's logo.Six tips for making a bulletin interesting
If your bulletin gets lost in someone's car on the way home, you want them to know how to connect again when they find it in a few weeks.
Always include in your bulletin your full church logo, contact information, social media, etc. No one ever signed up for an event because they were charmed by a smiling turtle holding a Bible. But keep it modern and fresh by leaving the clip-art in Publisher. Look for ways to make your content engaging and exciting. Use your logo, brand colors, and brand language to keep it clear that this bulletin is from your church. Your readers will remember and retain more when you chunk information effectively. "CHUNK" or organize content into groups by leaving white (empty) space between sections of content and using large/bold, prominent headers to call attention to it.Visual cues are also helpful in making action steps (call this person, sign-up for that event) clear to your readers. PRIORITIZE content with visual cues (color, type size, imagery) to indicate which information is of highest importance, then of secondary importance and so on.REDUCE content by simplifying descriptions of events to the most essential information, then direct readers to your website and/or a phone number/email address where they can learn more information.Here's what they had to say: Six tips for making a bulletin clear So, we sat down with our designers to get their thoughts on how to make bulletins clear, interesting and effective. They contain colors outside of the church's brand palette, content that isn't clear and typefaces that don't correctly represent the hierarchy/importance. Often, we find church bulletins cluttered with too much information or too many images.
Weekly bulletins can be an incredibly helpful communications tool.