One of my first assignments as the communications assistant at St. James Catholic Church in Falls Church, Virginia, was to redesign the weekly bulletin.

Despite very capable staff, there were no design or style guidelines and the result was often cluttered. As a first step, I eliminated the unnecessary use of text box outlines and chose a single font and size for type. I also created story headers. Next, I matched the color scheme to the parish e-newsletter and the parish website redesign that will launch this fall. The final step will be to incorporate the new diocesan logo into the youth ministry page along with icons that explain each type of event or story as done in the recently released YouCat, a catechism for teens.