November 5, 2007

Lessons In Not Sucking, Communication In Print

This is part two in a series on Lessons In Not Sucking. Today we discuss communication in print. This is all in the context of marketing so it's important to filter my comments through that lens.

1. Print adds legitimacy to your message
Whenever something is put in print--whether it be proper or propaganda, it adds some legitimacy to what you're saying. It's nice to see and hear. When you can touch or take away something it makes the message stick a little more and creates a reference point.

2. The call to action: what and where
Just as I said with communicating online, you've got to remember to have a call to action. When someone gets your printed piece (postcard, bulletin, invitation, etc.), what do you want them to do? Call? Register? Tell someone else? If the call to action isn't clear, don't expect much in return.

3. Remember “the who”
They're not just a band, the "who" is also your audience. And if you don't have them in mind every second you're creating printed pieces, you're wasting time. When you put things in print, this is not the time to think about you, it's the time to think about them.

Continue reading "Lessons In Not Sucking, Communication In Print"

Posted by Brad Abare at 7:31 AM
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September 17, 2007

The Art of the Critique

Sometimes there's something that's just so good in the Church Marketing Lab that it needs to migrate to our front page here. This is one of those occasions.

User "wiseacre photo" has written up a piece called "The Art of the Critique." It aims to be a guide for churches hiring designers to critique their work in its early stages. It succeeds at being much more. It can expand from graphic design to employee reviews to volunteer encouragement to pastoral critique. And beyond. Here's a taste of what he says, but you can read the whole article in our Church Marketing Lab.

Continue reading "The Art of the Critique"

Posted by Joshua Cody at 5:34 AM
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March 16, 2007

Design Matters: Creating Powerful Imagery for Worship

by Greg Atkinson, Guest Blogger

For anyone involved in the world of church design, marketing and branding (whether new or a seasoned pro), I'd like to recommend a book for you to check out called Design Matters: Creating Powerful Imagery for Worship by Len Wilson and Jason Moore of Midnight Oil Productions. In my class at MinistryCOM last year, I talked about "leading up" and being proactive to pass on good reads to your pastors so they can better appreciate what you do. This book is well written resource for designers, but also great for a pastor to more fully understand and appreciate design, designers and the work that goes into what you do.

Continue reading "Design Matters: Creating Powerful Imagery for Worship"

Posted by Guest Blogger at 7:40 AM
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March 5, 2007

Cute, Clever and Cool

One of my daily blog reads is Signal vs. Noise from the folks behind 37signals. Not only do I use a few of their products (personally and professionally), I really appreciate their perspective as it relates to significant simplicity.

One of their posts today was about being cute, clever and cool as it relates to design. The idea is to make sure that these 3 C's should be viewed as ingredients to our design, not as ends of themselves. Pow!

It's the difference between driving toward the three C's, and bringing the three C's along for the journey. The next time I start a project, I want to season in the three C's, not attempt to accomplish or conquer them.

Posted by Brad Abare at 2:49 PM
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February 26, 2007

Amarillo Church Wins Addy Award

An Amarillo, Texas church snagged a best in show (registration requried) at the Addy Awards for the second year in a row. Trinity Fellowship Church won the local division of the highly respected awards competition for creative marketing and advertising, beating out mainstream corporations and organizations in Amarillo.

"Usually what you see is that churches are behind the mark of what the world and other businesses in town are doing. We are doing our best to reach people just as much as Coca-Cola is. Marketing and advertising is the modern language we all speak. It's our outlet to speak the hope of Jesus Christ through a language that everyone understands." -Patrick Kemp, associate pastor of creative ministries

Nice. Keep this up and we'll have to change our name.

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 7:34 AM
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August 1, 2006

Lessons from Seth Godin

Marketing guru Seth Godin recently offered up two gems for designers, I Love Typefaces and How to Live Happily with a Great Designer.

The typefaces entry features seven tips for using typefaces well. My favorite bit of advice: "A font is a tool, not an amusement park ride."

The piece on living happily with a designer is some great wisdom for how to communicate on design projects. So often that communication process is just ugly. Perhaps the best advice is the retort, "You can't tell me you'll know it when you see it." More often than not most problems with design projects could be avoided by better and more thorough communication up front.

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 5:34 PM
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MinistryCom Awards: Deadline August 15

We mentioned the MinistryCom Awards a while back, and it's worth another mention. The deadline has been extended to August 15, so if you were thinking about entering and never got around to it you have a second chance.

Awards for excellence in church communication will be presented at the MinistryCom conference in September (though you don't have to be present to win).

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 5:18 PM
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July 11, 2006

5 Lists for Graphic Designers

Everybody loves lists! So we present our own list of lists to help graphic designers.

1. 50 Ways to Become a Better Designer - Loads of ideas, best practices and general creative stuff straight from the mouths of fellow designers. (via)

2. 10 Things They Never Taught Me in Design School - Start with what you know, then tackle the unknowns. Don't over-think the problem. Learn to give some hierarchy to the details and the big picture. (FYI, the list includes a few profanities)

3. 10 Strangest Desks and Tables - OK, this one has little to do with design, but sometimes you need some funky inspiration, especially when you're thinking about decorating the usually boring church space.

4. 4 Principles that Make for Great Logo Design - Simple and basic stuff, but sometimes that's exactly what you need. Complete with thumbs up and thumbs down examples.

5. 7 Ways to Improve Your Logo - OK, so they don't pitch it in a numbered list format, but we'll make it work. Good thoughts on how to polish an existing logo, including examples from Microsoft and Apple.

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 5:55 AM
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May 30, 2006

Stock Photography Sucks

In the Church Marketing Lab I'm always applauding people for using original photography. This is why.

Jason Kottke points us to some of the drawbacks of stock photography. Like the same girl who has feminine hygiene issues also wants to learn about Java design patterns.

Or how about the college girl pitching computers for Dell and Gateway, cameras for Samsung, tax advice from H&R Block, shoes for Avia, needs a boost from Vivarin and wants to be an actuary? And she can pitch whatever you like for the low, low price of $135.

Continue reading "Stock Photography Sucks"

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 2:08 PM
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May 24, 2006

Non-Profit Pricing from Adobe

When it comes to graphic design software, Adobe's Creative Suite is pretty much the industry standard. But it doesn't come cheap ($900 list price).

So ChurchMedia.net has started a petition asking Adobe to offer religious non-profit pricing. (link via DJ Chuang)

Update: It seems Adobe is already exploring the non-profit options. There's a new non-profit Adobe blog, a PDF about the Open Options Nonprofit Licensing Program and a list of non-profit authorized resellers. So I think that means you can now score some non-profit pricing on Adobe products.

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 7:34 AM
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May 19, 2006

MinistryCom Awards

This year's MinistryCom conference will also include the first ever Excellence in Communications Awards. It's a chance for churches to be recognized for creating marketing that doesn't suck.

Categories include outreach events, identity development and web site design and will be broken into classes based on church size (under 1000, 1,001-3,000, 3,001-5,000 and 5,000 and up).

Entries must be submitted online by July 14, 2006 and pay a $50 fee per entry. Winners will receive a MinstryCom award presented at the MinistryCom conference (you don't have to be present to win) and finalists will receive an award certificate.

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 7:22 AM
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October 27, 2005

Realigning vs. Redesigning

Speaking of improving web sites, we were sent a link today about the difference between redesigning a site and realigning it. The main point is that massive redesigns where you toss out everything and start over don't need to be the order of the day. Instead designers should seek to improve what's already there, making subtle changes and tweaks to retain the ideas but improve the experience. The result is usually better and often cheaper than starting from scratch.

Good call.

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 1:37 PM
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Getting Feedback on Church Marketing

We've been offering our peer review since July as a way to help churches help each other. In that time we've done 14 reviews and have hopefully offered good feedback and suggestions to those who submitted designs, and maybe given ideas and encouragement to those quietly lurking as well.

Of course we can't review everything. And with that in mind it's cool to see someone like Sam Decker offer "lightning round" web site reviews. He actually gives the feedback himself instead of letting the community do it like we do, but it's still feedback. Yesterday he reviewed RiverPointe Church in Richmond, Texas and recruited Terry Storch to help him out.

The fun thing about reviews like this is that you can apply the basic lessons to your own work and everybody can get something out of it.

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 1:19 PM
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October 26, 2005

Less is More: Before and After at Granger Community Church

Earlier this month Kem Meyer, a guest blogger here at Church Marketing Sucks and the Communications Director at Granger Community Church in Granger, Ind., shared some design lessons on her blog. She talked about removing the clutter in design and as a result increasing the importance of each element. To prove her point she shared some before and after designs from Granger.

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 7:48 AM
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October 20, 2005

Faith-Based Design Submissions

GIA Publications is considering the possible publication of a book on faith-based graphic design. The submission guidelines say that "communications media from any organized worship tradition or denomination are eligible." The deadline for submission is February 1, 2006 and there is a $75 entry fee for up to three items.

In more graphic design submission news, Blank is accepting submissions for their Designs That Touch the Heart show. They're accepting just about any work from just about any one. There's no entry fee and the deadline is January 1, 2006. They hope to have an online show in the spring of 2006.

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 8:32 AM
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October 6, 2005

Nuns with Guns

I just about died when I saw this flier. It comes from The Refuse, a Colorado Springs church that submitted their web site for this week's peer review, and it sounds like they inherited the flier from their parent church, Scum of the Earth. At any rate, I can't remember a funnier bit of church advertising.

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 7:53 AM
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September 27, 2005

Christians Aren't the Only Immitators

We're not the only ones. Today I opened my Time magazine and saw this "Islam Inside" T-shirt. It reminded me of an entry I wrote a while back lamenting the flood of imitation designs among churches. Apparently Christians aren't the only ones producing copycat designs.

(And I realize a ton of parody logos exist, but there's a big difference between turning a corporate logo into a bathroom, drug, or sex reference and turning a logo into a religious reference.)

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 12:49 PM
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July 27, 2005

The Christian Imitation

Have you ever seen a "got pepsi?" T-shirt?

No.

Do you know why? Because Pepsi—and any other company and organization worth their salt—is smart enough to come up with something original. They don't "borrow" ideas from other campaigns and insert their own name. They don't make look-alike logos.

Once in a great while they may spoof another company's commercial or tag line, but usually only the very clever can pull it off.

So why does the church constantly imitate what's already been done?

Continue reading "The Christian Imitation"

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 8:00 PM
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May 27, 2005

Graphic Design Resources

Nick Ciske over at Creative Church has been posting tons of free resources for designers:

• Briar Press - A collection of free wood cuts and initial caps to add a touch of style to your next project.
• Blue Vertigo - A site that offers links to tons of free stock photography and font sites.
• Beginner's Guide to Creative Arts - A PDF guide to creating a full and artistic worship service. It's not strictly for graphic designers, but anyone designing a church service should check it out.

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 7:33 AM
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March 11, 2005

Easter Advertising

Easter is the one day out of the year when people who never go to church actually think about going. What are you doing to make sure people pick your church?

Ben Bell shared this design for an Easter card for St. Stephen’s Church in London (you may remember Ben’s Christmas card). The back reads:

jesus on trial

despised? rejected? betrayed? let down? traumatised? friendless? innocent? son of god?

(link via Knightopia)

Meanwhile Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain e-mailed us these designs for past Easter ads for Lakemount Worship Centre in Ontario, Canada.

It's nice to see something other than grassy fields and sunrises.

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 1:22 PM
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December 16, 2004

The Church Christmas Card

Ben Bell designed this Christmas card for his church, St. Stephen's Church in Islington, London. Every year the church sends out a card to households, shops and offices in their parish. The back of the card has service times.

I'm impressed with the simplicity and attention-grabbing nature of the card. They're taking advantage of the holiday season to remind people about church, but doing so in a very non-traditional way. It grabs your attention. Nice job. (link via Brian Baute)

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 11:26 AM
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August 31, 2004

Comic Sans is NOT Okay

Trust me on this one. Neither is using any other crazy font to spice up your flyers, newsletter or anything you print. Typography is an art, and if you're no artist you better tread lightly. Thanks to the computer, fonts have spread like chicken pox in kindergarten. Every computer comes preloaded with more fonts than you'll ever use, and a cheap CD can offer a different font for every member of your church. But that doesn't mean it's okay to use them all.

A little font restraint can add a healthy dose of class and style to whatever you're producing.

Continue reading "Comic Sans is NOT Okay"

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 9:54 AM
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