Map with mountain and sword symbol along a dotted line. David and Goliath is bolded in the center of the map

I was tasked with building out a sermon series graphic package for RockPointe’s Young Adult Ministry for teaching over the story of David and Goliath.

My process

The brief

I was given the title and a title for each week. The four titles were the introduction, the challenge, the battle, and the victory. This ministry is target towards my demographic so I was able to fill in the other details. I also had access the ministry’s brand guide which included fonts and colors.

Brainstorming

I was pretty familiar with the story of David and Goliath from 1 Samuel 17. The first thing I did was create a set of symbols for each title. For the introduction, I came up with using a path or a map as a reference to the journey that David’s journey to the battlefield. For the challenge, the symbol that came to mind was a mountain. This represented both the overwhelming nature of Goliath’s challenge and the physical location where the challenge was given. The next symbol was a slingshot to represent the battle. This is the most obvious symbol because David chose to the use a weapon he was familiar with instead of a sword. The final symbol was a sword for the victory. This symbol comes from 1 Samuel 17:51 where David cuts off Goliath’s head, a gory detail that was left out in the recounts of this story I heard as a child.

A whiteboard with various symbols including a path and map symbol for the introduction, a mountain symbol for the challenge, a slingshot symbol for the battle, and a sword symbol for the victory.

Early concepts

The first concept I attempted was a grand illustration with a path into the mountains. This design pan out so I pivoted to a new set of concepts. While I was sitting in a coffee shop, where all the best creative work happens, I started working on two directions. The first direction had each symbol in the corner and used a western looking font. The other direction looked like a treasure map with a dotted line connecting each of the titles.

symbols conceptMap concept

Refining the concepts

After stepping back, I found that I preferred the second concept. However, I put a good amount of work into developing the symbols. So I added the mountain symbol in between the intro and the challenge then added the sword between the fight and the victory. Adding the symbols helped nail down the concept of the map.

Map with mountain and sword symbol along a dotted line. David and Goliath is bolded in the center of the map