Print + Packaging Design

Organization: Fairfax Community Church
Role: Strategy & evaluation team member / Creative lead for design, production, and distribution

How do we make it fun and easy for small groups to get started? That was the question that guided this project from the beginning — and it turned out to be the right question to ask.

The original GroupLink materials were a standard half-fold booklet with dense paragraphs, no personality, and a format that accidentally worked against the very thing small groups are supposed to do: get people talking to each other. Leaders would open the first meeting by reading from the book. Attendees would follow along. And the chance for something genuinely connective would slip by.

The goal wasn't just to make the booklet look better. It was to make the entire experience work better.

I was part of a cross-functional design thinking team led by the small group pastor and shaped by people who had actually sat through those first awkward meetings with the old booklet. Using a human-centered design approach, we used sticky notes to map what wasn't working, what we wanted people to feel, and what format would actually serve a group of strangers trying to become community. The goal became turning a boring manual that felt more like an orientation guide into the feeling of having a game night with friends, something that felt natural, set the tone for connection, and gave people a shared experience to build trust and relationship on.

That process led us to scrap the booklet entirely. Instead, we designed a Starter Kit that had everything the group needed to get started: an instruction sheet, six weekly cue cards, conversation starter cards, Post-it notes, and a Sharpie. I took part in every phase in project, including evaluation, brainstorming, content writing, visual design, production, and distribution. The colors were bright and the tone was playful which were intentional signals that this was supposed to be fun. The card format made engagement the default instead of reading of a booklet.

When the kit launched, the small group pastor shared that it truly accomplished the goals we set from the beginning. What I'm most proud of isn't the design. It's that we didn't stop at redesigning the booklet. Instead, we questioned whether the booklet was the right tool at all, and built something better from the ground up.