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Church of England Logo

Visual identity

The way in which the Church of England is perceived can be strongly influenced by the way in which it presents itself visually; the badge and guidelines are intended to result in a contemporary, relevant and professional appearance, which will enhance the Church's mission.

All Church of England dioceses and parishes can make use of the badge, with or without the namestyle. Service sheets, news and notice sheets, web sites, stationery and external signage are all excellent places to make use of the artwork. It can be rendered flat, raised or incised. It is made available for download here, free of charge.

Based on the traditional Christian cross, encompassed within an "e", the circular device implies universality, while the shape echoes the letters "c" and "e", recalling the Church's name. It has become popular around the country with both dioceses and parishes and its use has enhanced the visual identity of the Church of England while at the same time allowing for its diversity.

The device is calculated to have contemporary appeal, while still preserving a sense of tradition, the modern appearance of the design being counterpointed by the "celtic" treatment of the cross.

Guidelines on using the badge and namestyle

Three basic configurations of the badge (the circular "e" device) and the namestyle (the "Chuch of England" typography) are provided on this web site to download. The namestyle should never be typeset nor the symbol redrawn, but should be taken from the artwork provided.

Supporting typefaces and colour

Supporting typefaces for use in publications should whenever possible be Franklin Gothic (contemporary) or Bookman Old Style (traditional). You may also like to use Gill Sans, when producing liturgical service sheets. Gill Sans is the font used in the Common Worship official publications. If Franklin Gothic and Gill Sans are not available, Verdana, Helvetica or Arial can be used. If Sabon is not available, Times New Roman can be used.

The standard colour combination is purple (badge) and deep blue (namestyle) on a white background. White on black or black on white is also common practice. For a more colourful alternative, the gold of Glory against a purple background is recommended. The purple used for the badge is pantone number 2577. The nearest web safe equivalent colour is #CC66CC. The deep blue used in the namestyle is pantone number 2747. The nearest web safe equivalent colour is #330066.

Using TIF files

The three images are provided as TIF files. TIF Files are a common graphics format that can be understood by most computer software. TIF has been chosen since it preserves the highest possible quality of resolution, although the file sizes can be quite large. Once you have saved the file/s you may wish to convert them to other graphics formats, depending on how you intend to use the images. We leave this choice up to you.

Finally, two downloads provided ZIP files (archive or compressed folder). The first provides all three images in black and white in a range of graphical formats (BMP, EPS, PCX and TIF). The second provides the three images in colour, but as TIF files only.

To use these ZIP files, you will need software that can unpack ZIP files. The most common software is WinZip. You can download a free evaluation version of this from the WinZip web site.

To download the files

To download the files, save them to your PC hard disk by right-clicking on the download link and choosing 'save target as' or 'save link as'. Choose a filename and a location and then choose "save" to begin the download. Mac users should also be able to save the files to their hard disk in a similar manner, using either browser.

Copyright details

The guidelines provided on this page are adapted from "The Church of England Visual Identity: Design Guidelines" which is available from the Communications Office on request (contact tel: 020 7898 1459).