In March of 2017 I accepted a “solemn appointment” to work for The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod’s mission in Spain as a communications specialist. I started raising over $150,000 in June of ’17 and decided to come up with my own personalized brand to communicate what I was doing and illustrate its value.

This is the image I chose and designed to represent me. I used it on all of my social media profiles and marketing materials. The picture is of me with some of my students while I was teaching English in Seville. It showed that I already had experience living in Seville, speaking Spanish, and making connections. My Facebook page has over 200 followers (mostly people I know personally). My Instagram account has over 700 followers (mostly people I don’t know). My Mailchimp newsletters have an audience of over 500 with a 45% open rate and 10% click rate. I usually create my newsletters in Adobe InDesign and include them in PDF form as a button in the Mailchimp newsletter, but sometimes I design my newsletter right in Mailchimp to give a quick update.

The synod has “prayer cards” that missionaries can order with a picture, bio, and giving information, but I wanted to create something of my own. I was inspired by a fundraiser who prints out "missionary adoption agreements" on legal paper to convey the commitment involved in supporting a missionary. I wanted a small card that people could hold on to and pin up somewhere. I wanted it to be personalized because I know people like to decide “oooh, which one am I?" I wanted give ideas on different ways to support me, and I wanted to reinforce the idea that God had called the individual to support the mission in this way. By supporting me, they are also part of the mission and responsible for it.

Most people took the prayer warrior or financial supporter card because they didn’t know what a mission champion was (and honestly it was the biggest commitment).

These are a few updates I designed for churches to include as an insert in their bulletins.

These are some images I made for social media posts. All of the pictures are taken by me, and my aim was to help inform people on how they could support me and the mission. I made these before I landed on the Prayer Warrior, Mission Champion, and Financial Supporter roles.

People sensed that I was “soliciting,” and that made them uncomfortable. Often times people would just  donate $100 and want to be done. Any gift is great obviously, but there was usually so much more a person could do.

For the last square I was looking for an Arabic inspired font and couldn’t find one that I liked, so I created my own.

A big part of my fundraising involved setting up presentations at churches. When I would go to a church, I would have several or all of these posters that I designed set up on a table with other information. I wanted to posters to quickly communicate the need for the mission in Spain, the current state of the mission, my background, and how others could get involved. I would present, usually during the Bible study hour, and I would talk to people interested in my work at my table. I would have a sign up sheet for my newsletter, pre-addressed envelopes, and my partnership agreements out on the table.

Above is a picture I took in Porto, Portugal that I used in the thank you postcard I designed below.

Below is the postcard I designed as an invitation to the party my parents held for me. The feria lanterns (lines of circles) I created became a favorite motif of mine.

In the very beginning I looked for fonts that inspired confidence in my capabilities as a missionary and reflected the importance of the work I was going to be part of while making intimate, human connections with people and having fun. Pateglamt became my decorative font. It’s formal and elegant but also fun with some dramatic flourishes. It doesn’t take itself too seriously - kind of like Flamenco. I started out only also using Avenir. Later I started using Athelas (seen in the postcard above) as the principle font since the serif brings it closer to Times New Roman. I still used Avenir for some headings.