Church Communications Expert Spills All

We are so honored to partner with vibrant parishes across the United States, each one working to bring the kingdom of God to their communities in unique ways. At St. Margaret of York in Loveland, Ohio, Michelle Manczyk serves as the parish communications coordinator. One of her many responsibilities is to design their parish bulletin. We sat down with her this week to learn more about her experience working with church bulletin design, gather some tips and tricks, and hear about the resources she uses to create such a beautiful weekly bulletin. 

Q. Hi Michelle, your parish’s bulletin is awesome! How long have you been designing it?
A. Thanks! I’ve been working for St. Margaret as communications coordinator for over 6 years now! When I first started this job, the bulletin design was a little rough, so I’ve been slowly updating and developing it over time. The current iteration launched in 2021 although I’m always working to improve it. I had a unique opportunity when I started this position at St. Margaret because we were switching from our old bulletin company to using LPi for our bulletins, so I took advantage of that transfer to build something new. 

Q. What are your goals for the bulletin? 

A. My vision is that our bulletin should be a vehicle for catechesis and faith formation instead of a glorified repeat of the parish calendar. Now, the calendar is important so we do include the larger calendar items, but the rest can be found on our website. This makes a lot of room in the bulletin for other content.

Q. Speaking of content, where do you find inspiration? 

A. I definitely use content from WeCreate a lot. It saves me time because, with WeCreate, I don’t have to come up with a cover design by myself every week and I like to use a lot of the square graphics available. I find that even the social media graphics in WeCreate can be perfect options to fill blank space in the bulletin. My parish and I also really love the Father Flood comics in WeCreate. They’re so much fun! We put a Father Flood comic into every bulletin and my husband always flips right to the comic to start with before he reads the rest of it. Those little clips are a fantastic way to get people excited about the publication.

Q. What kind of feedback have you heard?

A. The majority of the feedback for the new direction for the bulletin has been overwhelmingly positive. Our parish is in a suburb of Cincinnati, so we have a lot of parishioners who work for big companies downtown. At these companies, employees are exposed to a polished, professional look for print publications, so it’s important to us that they can tell we’ve taken extra care to make sure the church bulletin design looks great. 

Q. What is your favorite aspect of creating the bulletin every week?
A. The design layout and typography part of it are my favorite things to work on. When I first started working at St. Margaret, all we had when it came to church branding was a logo and nothing else. Over time I’ve enhanced the brand for our parish with design elements unique to us. I’ve gathered lots of inspiration from the church architecture. For example, there’s a design carved into the altar that I used to inspire a ribbon that can be found in the bulletin design. Another example of this is down by the numbers on each page of the bulletin there is a red box with a little circle. These corollate with a design element found on the outside of our parish buildings. Using the church architecture as inspiration has enriched our visual identity. 

Q. What tools help you get the job done?

A. I use WeCreate a lot and I also use Adobe Creative Suite programs. We also make use of the Parishes Online bulletin website widget to keep the bulletin automatically updated on our parish website every week. We include links to the digital bulletin in many of our emails and parish communications directing people to view that week’s bulletin online in case they missed picking one up at church. 

Q. Lastly, what tips do you have for other editors?
A. Don’t forget to give yourself time to look at your bulletin with fresh eyes. It’s good to build it one day, sleep on it, then come back to it the next day or even a couple days later to make sure there aren’t any mistakes you’ve missed. Also, don’t forget to have a proofreader! 

Thank you, Michelle, for sharing your parish and expertise with us!

Looking for more articles about design for church bulletins and more? Head on over to the "Art and Design" section of our blog for inspiration.

Updated on 03-18-2024