A look at what 46 churches designed in one week, and three practical lessons about timing, seasonal patterns, and scope that every church communicator needs to hear.
This article comes from episode 6 of Church Design Weekly, our short weekly podcast on what churches are actually designing. Listen to the episode here.
One hundred and nine new design requests. Forty-six churches. One hundred and fifty-five completed projects delivered. That was a single week in the design queue, and the pattern hiding inside those numbers is worth paying attention to if you lead communications or ministry at a church.
Josh Starr, founder of PixelPainters, has been tracking the weekly request data closely, and three things stood out from this particular week in mid-September. Christmas graphics were already flooding in. Trunk or Treat requests came in from three completely separate churches in the same week. And one church submitted a request to put their logo on a vehicle. Together, those three things tell a story about how churches plan, where they get caught off guard, and how a little foresight can save a lot of scrambling.
Probably not. In fact, if you have not started yet, you may already be running behind.
In the third week of September, a significant portion of the design queue was already Christmas: Christmas Eve graphics, advent sermon series artwork, Christmas party and Christmas tea invitations, advent study materials, Christmas digital assets, and even a Christmas break announcement graphic. These were not requests from churches that plan unusually far ahead. According to Josh, these were the churches that are simply on time.
Here is why the timeline works the way it does. Advent series artwork needs to be approved before it can go to print. Printed materials need to be ordered before they can be distributed. Distribution needs to happen before people make their holiday plans. Each of those steps takes time, and they stack on top of each other. By the time most church teams start thinking about Christmas design in late October or early November, several of those windows have already closed.
If you have not mapped out your holiday design needs yet, even a rough list is a good starting point. What series are you running? What events need promotional materials? What do you need printed versus digital? Getting that list down now puts you in a much better position than waiting until the calendar forces your hand.
Because everyone is planning at the last minute together.
Three separate churches submitted Trunk or Treat graphics in the same week, with no coordination between them. That kind of simultaneous demand is not a coincidence. Seasonal events like fall festivals, Easter egg hunts, and back-to-school campaigns hit the entire church world at the same time. Which means every church is asking for the same kinds of graphics in the same short window, right when designers are already busy.
Josh describes it simply: the wave is predictable. You can either get your request in before it builds, or you can ride it in alongside everyone else and hope for the best. If you know a seasonal event is on your calendar, the single most useful thing you can do is submit your design request early, before the crunch.
The week's data points to three concrete habits worth building into how your team approaches design requests.
That third point came from one of the more unusual requests in the week's queue: a church submitting a vehicle graphic. Josh noted that it stood out precisely because it sits in a different category from a bulletin insert or an announcement slide. Permanent, large-scale work has higher stakes, and designers need that information upfront to serve you well. If you work with an in-house volunteer or an outside team, the habit is the same: lead with context.
If your team is ready to get ahead of the holiday season with professional design support, a free consultation is a good place to start.
Most church communications teams should begin submitting Christmas and advent design requests by early-to-mid September at the latest. Printed materials, series artwork, and promotional graphics each require approval, production, and distribution time that compounds quickly. Churches that wait until October or November often find themselves rushed or unable to get printed pieces in time for the first Sunday of advent.
The most important thing is to include context your designer would not otherwise know. Specify where the piece will live, the approximate size or dimensions if you know them, how long it will be displayed or in use, and whether it will be produced by a specific vendor who has file requirements. A brief note about permanence signals to your designer that this piece deserves a different level of care than a single-use social graphic, and it prevents back-and-forth that slows down delivery.
The most practical approach is to build a simple design calendar at the start of each quarter, listing every event, series, and campaign that will need graphics. Seasonal events like fall festivals, trunk-or-treat nights, and Easter outreach tend to land at the same time for churches everywhere, which means designers and print vendors are busy right when you need them most. Submitting requests two to four weeks before you actually need a finished piece gives you a buffer for revisions and production, and keeps your team out of the last-minute wave.
PixelPainters works exclusively with churches and ministries, and the team behind the queue sees these patterns every single week. If your church wants a design partner who understands the rhythms of the church calendar, you can get started with two weeks free.