Renewing a national treasure with a vibrant, working brand

About St Paul’s Cathedral

St Paul’s Cathedral is a vibrant Church of England Cathedral – a place of worship, national celebration and commemoration, and an internationally recognised London icon.

Designed by Sir Christopher Wren after the Great Fire of London in 1666, it has been at the heart of the Diocese of London for over 1,400 years, offering space for reflection, worship, learning and debate.

Its services and moments of commemoration bring together world leaders, the Royal Family and nearly 400,000 worshippers each year. It’s also one of the UK’s leading heritage attractions, drawing around 800,000 visitors annually.

Redefining its role in the world

The leadership team at St Paul’s were redefining what the Cathedral should stand for and the impact it could have in the world.

Following a period of change – from the recovery after Covid to the addition of new trustees and senior leaders – they’d just set a bold ten-year vision. They needed our help in turning this into a clear story and a revitalised identity.

As a vibrant, working Cathedral, St Paul’s wanted a vibrant, working brand. It had to reflect the Cathedral’s wider ambitions: expanding its educational reach, amplifying new voices and delivering a visitor experience worthy of a world-class cultural landmark.

At the same time, it had to serve a broad community, from Londoners and civic institutions to worshippers, volunteers, schools and visitors from around the globe.

Thinking like Wren: Shaping the strategy and story

We created a new brand strategy and verbal identity, which laid the foundations for a new visual identity designed by our partners, Pentagram.

To shape the strategy, we embarked on a discovery journey which involved people from across the Cathedral, from volunteers to choristers, from stonemasons to board members, from canon stewards to the Bishop of London. Inspired by how polymath Christopher Wren would work, we set out to be structured, collaborative and iterative throughout.

In one emotive exercise, we asked a group to write love letters to St Paul’s, covering what they loved most about the cathedral and what things could make it better. This input, along with several other interviews, workshops and hours of research, helped us shape a new vision, mission, positioning and set of values to guide the brand.

At times, writing the story felt like a daunting task. In our research, we’d read works about St Paul’s by the likes of John Donne and George Eliot. But having chipped away at the strategy, making sure it was solid and then signed off by the leadership team, we had a platform to build from in starting to tell the story.

Some people call it a manifesto, a brand story or a strategic narrative. We told St Paul’s story around its new positioning line, ‘Your cathedral, always’, as something that can be used to guide brand decision making and inform communications.

What we achieved

The brand has just launched. Some of the images are below. We won’t be able to measure the full impact of the new brand for a while, but for now, our work has united staff, volunteers and partners at St Paul’s together around one story.

Anyone in business knows how challenging it is to get everyone singing from the same hymn sheet (pun 100% intended), and that was one of the big pay-offs during this project. It was a pleasure to meet and collaborate with so many people from across this global landmark and national treasure.

Our design partners Pentagram created a typographic-inspired identity which was chiselled into stone by the Cathedral’s stonemasons. This was then digitally rendered to give the final wordmark a unique, human touch.

Our tone of voice principles were ‘Welcoming’, ‘Stirring’ and ‘Enduring’. They encouraged people to ‘Speak from the pulpit, not the balcony’, ‘Open the doors wide’, ‘Make it sensory’ and ‘Sound like one cathedral, not many chapels’.

We aimed for our copy to create the feeling of an inviting space.

When you’re in St Paul’s, you can stumble upon so many architectural or artistic surprises and moments of joy. We wanted our tone of voice to strike the same feel, appealing to Londoners as well as a global audience.

We wanted to equip the team with some examples of how to land the right tone, everywhere, whether it’s in their policy documents, job descriptions, marketing communications or order of service pamphlets.