Catholic Parenting Initiative Logo

The Catholic Parenting Initiative is a program started by OLV Charities in 2024. The goal of the initiative is to give Catholic parents resources to better promote the Catholic religion to their children and within their families.

The head of the initiative came to the OLV Creative team for a logo that could be used on their website and other materials. In our exploration stage, she had brought up a Catholic design motif we weren’t aware of, which is that of a pelican with her young. It’s a popular mosaic and stained glass image in a lot of churches, and the meaning behind it actually predates Catholicism itself. Sometimes the image is just portrayed as a pelican with her babies, while other times it’s portrayed as a pelican striking her chest to feed her babies with her blood. This was picked up as a Catholic design motif because of its similarity to Christ shedding his blood as a sacrifice for humanity in the lore of the religion.

Along with some other ideas we went through and did designs for, the pelican really stuck with me, and I thought a clean, detailed illustration of a pelican stained glass window would be an intriguing and eye-catching logo mark for the initiative. I thought it was such a strong symbol of the sacrifices and care that parents give their children, and I was happy that the head of the initiative loved the concept and went with it as the final logo.

The design is paired with a stylized, serif font, as well as rich jewel tones for the color palette, working together to push that stained glass vibe. The final logo and variations are featured below.