Cornerstone Manteca

Cornerstone Community Church in Manteca runs a full weekly print and digital calendar. When I came on in mid-2021, the church was working with Pastor Bryan Ball as Worship Pastor and Douglas Scott on the administrative side, and the cadence was project-numbered. Every email subject line had a project number. Project 006, Project 014, Project 017. By the time we wrapped, we were past Project 020.

How we started

The exterior banner was the entry point. They liked the banner I had designed earlier, and Douglas reached out wanting more of the same look across other materials. I had recently lost a chunk of project files to a computer issue, so I rebuilt the background from scratch and treated it as a new design system rather than a copy job. That turned out to be useful, because Bryan saw the cleaner direction and decided that should become the church's broader visual direction.

The arrangement was a monthly retainer with invoicing built around their pay schedule. Bryan suggested mid-month invoicing so the check would land by the first, and we stuck with that.

The work

The weekly bulletin was the core deliverable. Inside and outside spreads, every week, with the finance numbers, the event list, and the Sunday schedule. Tithe totals, missions totals, the "ALL IN" capital campaign running total. Children's Ministry times, Adult Sunday School, Youth Discipleship, 6th Grade Confirmation. The volume of detail was high and the deadlines were tight, often turning in 24 to 48 hours.

Around that core we ran sermon artwork series (Project 008 had me iterating on a sermon graphic until the white-overlay-on-colored-photo direction landed) and a string of event promos. A senior adults ministry graphic (60+ ministry, Project 006). A water baptism promo for an August 8 service (Project 016). A welcome dinner concept that the pastor wanted to feel like a recurring logo rather than a one-time graphic, which turned into the "fork and leaf" direction (Project 013). A Balance postcard for the church's mailing campaign, which had two design rounds plus print-prep coordination with the printer Cactus Mailing on file specs.

The printer work involved its own back and forth. Cactus had specific CMYK and DPI requirements, and on one round there was an artwork discrepancy flag I had to chase down. Same thing on the Outreach.com fulfillment side when files came back as low-resolution proofs.

A specific moment

The Project 002 exterior banner revision sticks with me because it was the moment the visual direction for the church shifted. I sent Bryan the cleaner rebuilt version and he wrote back twice in quick succession. The first email was the project approval. The second was different. He told me the look excited him, that the cleanliness paired with the artistic feel was the direction he wanted to move the whole church toward in general, and asked me to keep that direction in mind on everything coming through. That reframed the engagement from "execute the banner" to "set the visual standard."

In their words

"Emily this look really excites me. I think this is the look we should move toward in general for the church right now. I like the cleanliness of it but it's still artistic." Bryan Ball, Worship Pastor, June 2021

Where things stand

The Cornerstone Manteca engagement ran through summer 2021. The bulletin work, sermon artwork, banner, and Balance postcard campaign are part of the design archive from that season.