Pulpit Aside
In fall 2022 I entered a branding competition for a new podcast co-hosted by two pastors from different churches, built around a simple premise: set the pulpit aside and compare their church cultures on broader, everyday topics outside the traditional religious bubble. The identity needed to read as progressive and conversational, not churchy.
I benchmarked the top 100 podcasts on Spotify and YouTube and landed between two references: the face-card layout and bold type of Smartless, and the vector-traced character portraits of Pardon My Take. My first pass leaned on an icon combining a microphone, a pulpit, and a cross — conceptually sound but too rigid. I pivoted to illustrated portraits of the two hosts instead, built from reference photos in a bright blue/yellow/orange palette. Realistic eyes gave an uncanny-valley effect, so I abstracted the faces into featureless silhouettes — which read cleaner at thumbnail size and turned the hosts into a scalable, iconic mark rather than standard portraiture.
The face-card concept won the competition, and the client retained me to build it into a full broadcast package — lower thirds, animated title cards, and YouTube banners, all built on the same modular artwork. The identity is still in active use on the show today.
