A practical, step-by-step planning guide to help church communications teams produce sermon series graphics on time, on brand, and without the last-minute scramble.
Sermon series graphics touch nearly every corner of your church's communication, from the weekend bulletin to the lobby screen to Instagram. When they come together well, they create a cohesive experience that helps people engage with the message before they even sit down on Sunday. When they fall apart, they create extra stress for an already stretched team.
This checklist is designed to help you get ahead of the chaos, whether you are managing graphics in-house, working with volunteers, or partnering with a design service. Walk through it before your next series kicks off and adjust it to fit your church's rhythm.
Good design starts with good information. Before any creative work begins, your team needs clarity on the series itself. The earlier you can gather this, the better your final graphics will be.
This intake step is the one most teams skip, and it is the one that causes the most revisions later. A 20-minute conversation with your pastor at this stage can save hours down the road.
One of the most common mistakes in sermon series planning is underestimating how many distinct graphic assets the series requires. A single series can easily need 15 to 20 individual files across different formats and channels.
Write out every asset your church actually uses. Then prioritize ruthlessly. If your church barely uses Twitter, drop it from the list. If your lobby screens are the first thing guests see, put those near the top.
If you want to see examples of how other churches handle this scope of work, the PixelPainters portfolio shows a range of series graphic packages across different church sizes and styles.
Working backward from your series launch date is the most effective way to keep everything on track. Here is a sample timeline for a series launching on a Sunday.
If your design process runs through a service like PixelPainters' sermon series graphics workflow, factor in their standard turnaround time when placing your initial request. Building in a buffer of a few extra days is always worth it.
Approval bottlenecks are one of the top reasons graphics get finished late. Establish a clear review process before the series even begins.
Once your series graphics are complete, take 30 minutes to organize and archive them properly. Store layered files, not just flattened exports. Label folders clearly by series name and year. This makes it much easier to repurpose elements for future series or pull assets if the series runs again.
If this checklist feels like more than your current capacity can handle, that is a completely normal place to be. Many church comms teams are running on limited hours, volunteer help, and tools that were not really built for this kind of output. A flat-rate design subscription can absorb a significant portion of this workload without requiring you to hire a full-time designer. If that is something worth exploring for your team, a free consultation is a low-pressure way to see whether it fits your church's size and budget.
Whatever tools or team you have right now, the goal of this checklist is simple: help your church walk into Sunday morning with graphics that are ready, consistent, and one less thing to worry about.