Eastown Church

Eastown Church in Concord is led by Pastor Clint Dupin alongside Michaell Dupin, with Julie Vlahon and Lisa as part of the broader team. By the time I came on board, they were in the middle of a rebrand effort that was eating most of their internal design capacity, which is exactly why they brought me in. The church needed someone to hold down the smaller weekly projects so the rebrand work could keep moving on its own track.

How we started

Michaell reached out at the end of October 2023 asking for a call. We hopped on at 11 PST that week and talked through what their team needed. The shape we agreed on was a monthly arrangement at $500 to start, with the option to revisit in the new year once we saw the actual volume of requests coming through. I sent the first invoice for November on November 17 and the file-sharing setup ran through the Eastown Church Dropbox team folder that Julie added me to.

The work

Sermon graphics were the steady weekly throughput. The Art of Neighboring series was running across the fall, and I delivered new images every week tied to whoever was teaching, with titles like "People Who Move Toward" and "Fear Factor." Julie usually queued them up in Asana and sent the photo references over email. When the rebrand effort started bumping up against deliverables, Michaell asked me to drop the buffalo from their logo onto a new graphic and pair it with the Eastown wordmark.

The bigger project was the Christmas push. I rebuilt their baptism graphic when the original file came in without the photo link and font files (the church's previous designer had not packaged those). I designed a digital invite Julie wanted modeled loosely after one Echo Church had sent out, sized for sharing and saving. I updated the church's holiday calendar to match the new Christmas branding (the first version I sent was too far from the Christmas look and Michaell pushed it back, which was the right call). The "Make it Count" mailer went out as a direct mail postcard through Outreach.com, and there was a back and forth with the print rep Lianna and the key accounts manager Mark when low-resolution files got swapped during the proofing pipeline. I re-uploaded the high-res version and Mark got it across the line.

Outside the major projects I delivered a Concord Taco Tour graphic ("El Eastown" was the title direction Clint wanted, with the "taco tour" subhead), a Christmas Eve service promo with a gold border treatment, and the digital invite Julie used to push the holiday services to the congregation.

A specific moment

The Concord Taco Tour graphic came together in two rounds. I sent over a first direction the morning after Clint sent the brief. He liked it, then forwarded a reference image he wished he had sent earlier with a specific look and feel he wanted. I rebuilt the layout to match the example, including the "El Eastown" title treatment at the top. His reply: "Love it! Thank you." Short, but for a pastor who was juggling a rebrand, Christmas season, and the weekly preach calendar, that was a clean signal we had nailed it.

In their words

"Love it! Thank you" Clint Dupin, Lead Pastor, August 2023

Where things stand

The Eastown engagement closed in early 2024. We had some confusion on whether the arrangement was a continuing subscription or a one-time block, which Michaell took ownership of clearing up in late January 2024. The wrap was friendly. The body of work from that fall and Christmas season, including the Make it Count campaign, the Art of Neighboring sermon graphics, the digital invite, and the holiday calendar, is still part of their archive.