A practical, step-by-step guide to every graphic your church needs to promote Vacation Bible School, from save-the-dates to post-event follow-up. Plan ahead and stop scrambling the week before registration opens.
Vacation Bible School is one of the highest-visibility events most churches run all year. Parents are making decisions about where to send their kids, volunteers are deciding whether to sign up, and your community is watching. Good promotion graphics do not need to be flashy or expensive, but they do need to be consistent, clear, and ready on time. This checklist walks you through every asset you will likely need, organized by when to create it.
Before you design a single graphic, decide on three things: your VBS theme (if you are using a licensed curriculum, the theme is already chosen for you), your two or three primary colors, and the event dates and location. Every graphic flows from these. If your curriculum comes with a style guide or logo, use it consistently. If you are building a custom theme, keep it simple. A clean logo, two fonts, and two or three colors are enough to look polished across dozens of assets.
If your team is stretched thin and you are not sure where to start with a visual identity, browsing examples of past church design work can help you see what a cohesive VBS promotion campaign actually looks like in practice.
Use this list to track what you need and when to have it ready. Times are counted backward from your VBS start date.
Design your core promotional graphic once, then resize it for every placement. A well-designed square graphic can be adapted into a story (add padding or a background), a bulletin slide (adjust to 16x9), and an email header. This approach cuts your design time significantly and keeps everything looking unified.
VBS themes are often colorful and busy by nature. Make sure your event name, dates, and registration information are still easy to read at a glance. Test your graphics by shrinking them to thumbnail size on your phone. If the key details are still clear, you are in good shape.
Banners, yard signs, and flyers need to go to a printer two to three weeks before you want to use them. That means your design files need to be finalized at least a week before that. Build this into your timeline, not as an afterthought. Outdoor signage is still one of the most effective ways to reach families who do not attend your church yet.
Save every final graphic in one organized folder, labeled by asset type and size. When you need to quickly pull a graphic for a last-minute announcement, you will thank yourself for the five minutes you spent organizing earlier.
Many church communications teams are one or two people, sometimes volunteers. Producing thirty or more graphics over a six-week window is a real workload. If your team is already managing weekly sermon graphics, social posts, and bulletins, adding a full VBS campaign on top can lead to burnout or shortcuts that hurt the final result. A service like PixelPainters is built specifically for this situation, with a flat monthly rate, fast turnaround, and designers who understand church culture and ministry calendars.
The churches that run the smoothest VBS promotions are not necessarily the ones with the biggest budgets. They are the ones that planned their graphics calendar in advance, kept their visual style consistent, and did not try to do everything in the final two weeks. Use this checklist as your starting point, adapt it to your church's size and capacity, and give yourself permission to ask for help when you need it.
If you would like to talk through your VBS promotion plan and see whether a design subscription makes sense for your team, schedule a free consultation and we can walk through your timeline together.