Epiphany is a strong word for something so obvious
19 June 2008 Jeff Gill
After two years of helping to run a church my brain has finally started working. I just remembered what I’m good at:
- Connecting with and being liked and trusted by the people who run things
- The hustle – talking to people, selling ideas, making things happen
- Design thinking – coming up with the right idea to meet the need
- Presentation, especially on stage in front of an audience
I used these four abilities to build a design studio from nothing to way-way-way-too-busy in four years. Then I joined the i61 church plant and forgot. For two years, I have been making a lot of pretty things, physically and spiritually, for i61. I have been using those four skills to some degree in the church, but hardly at all to connect the church with the community.
When I went to work full time for i61 18 months ago, I had the idea of approaching ministry as a design job. I wanted to bring the thinking and creative skills that I had developed in five years as a designer to a new arena. But my ideas about how to do it were not well formed. It was all too nebulous, and it didn’t work. I soon slipped back into the place that was the norm for me during Ministry Career 1 in America: in front of the computer, comfortably afraid of doing the Things That A Person In Ministry Should Be Doing. I knew that i61 couldn’t operate very well without me, but What Was I There For, Really?
Was I actually contributing to the advancement of the kingdom of God? I’ve had very real doubts about that. It wasn’t a lack of ideas – I always have a million of those. It was a lack of connection. I wasn’t connecting what I am good at with the work of building God’s kingdom. I was trying to fit myself into my idea of what A Person In Ministry ought to be doing without even being fully aware that I had such an idea.
When I started my design studio. I had the advantage of not knowing how to be a graphic designer or how to run a business. I needed to feed my family and pay bills, so I just got on with it. When I went to work for i61 I had a decade of ministry experience and a lot of new ideas telling me what I should do. Somehow those things didn’t connect with what I can do best, what makes me thrive.
Last night in the bath, the place where most good thoughts are thought, I remembered the things that make me thrive. And for the first time I connected them with the works of God. Bam. I felt like I retrieved piece of myself from the shelf, the feisty bit that likes people and makes things happen.
The catalyst for this connection was a meeting with a high school assistant head teacher. I was talking to her about an event we do called Hi, School! Just having a meeting with someone outside of the church world was a buzz. During the meeting she invited me to do some school assemblies. I came alive inside. Here was a chance to start something. Starting things makes me happy.
Then I felt guilty. Shouldn’t I be focussing on what I’m already doing? This doesn’t fit perfectly with some of my New Ideas Of How To Do Ministry. If I like it, it is probably because it is an old, and therefore ineffective, way of doing things.
Fortunately, I came to my senses and realised that I get thrilled standing up in front of a crowd of teenagers and talking about the kingdom of God because Jesus in me gets thrilled to talk to a crowd of teenagers about the kingdom of God. It is one of the things I’m built to do.
That excitement has been bouncing around in me for a week, and last night it bounced off all the right things at once and gave me this really obvious realisation: The things that I love to do and do well are the things that will make me most effective in getting the good news of the kingdom of God to my community.
Damn the theories. I’m finally ready for action.
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tags: church,
design,
failure,
kingdom of god,
leadership
DIY design 7 - using templates
28 May 2008 Jeff Gill
Whatever design software you are using, it probably came with a bunch of templates.
Templates can be quite useful, if you know how to use them. Here’s how to use them:
Don’t start with the template. Start with what you want to communicate. What look and feel will reinforce your message? Once you know that, start looking at the templates. If you work in this order, your choices will be guided by your message, not by your software. If you are making a leaflet for your summer kids program and the Catering Brochure template is the best fit, use it.
Change it (if you have time). Be bold. Mess with the fonts and the colours. Use your own images. Just make sure that your changes are consistent. Make changes all across the document, not just here and there. The best way to do that is to change the document styles, rather than individual blocks of text.
I thought there was going to be a third point, but there isn’t.
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tags: design
Too good
26 May 2008 Jeff Gill
Seth Godin wrote a couple days ago about the importance of letting the evidence of human involvement be visible sometimes.
I think the promotion of the kids thing we are doing Wednesday is a good example. I made some fun and pretty invitations and laser printed them on card.
Front:
Back:
As I was distributing them about the neighbourhood, they started seeming too good. They weren’t quite right. I would have felt a lot more comfortable giving out pieces of paper with the details hand-written on them. That would have been inviting. Somehow what I was doing felt more like selling.
It’s okay. The reason we are doing this now is to start learning how.
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tags: children,
church,
community,
design
DIY design 6 - toolbox: finding images
11 May 2008 Jeff Gill
Let’s review what we have covered so far in the DIY design series
- Start with the right attitudes
- The obligatory and boring post on hardware
- Page layout software
- Image editing software (Photoshop, etc.)
If you are a creative person you haven’t been sitting around twiddling your mouse waiting for me to write this post. You probably found where to get images already. Nevertheless, I shall continue writing.
Unless you are a World-Famous Graphic Designer your image budget is probably about £0. That’s okay. It is 2008; everything is free. Just search Google for whatever you want. Copy. Paste. Voila!
WRONG.
Those images took time, energy and creativity to create. If you use them without permission, you are stealing. Thou shalt not. Also, my favourite wife, Christine The Photographer, and I, the World-Famous Graphic Designer will be very cross with you.
Instead, visit stock.xchng. They have over of 360,000 image. All are free. Many are very good. There is very little snapshotty stuff. Be sure to give proper credit to the photographers where required.
If stock.xchng doesn’t have what you need, do a Creative Commons search of Flickr. I recommend searching tags only and sorting by most interesting.
Morgue File is also good.
And there is lots more here.
You will have projects where none of these sources has the image you need. I suggest you do one of the following:
- Draw or make or photograph the image yourself.
- Make friends with a photographer now.
- Think – there may be a different and possibly better way to tell your story.
If for some reason you do have an image budget find a good photographer and hire them. If that won’t work, visit Getty Images or Alamy.
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tags: design
More good Samaritan
20 April 2008 Jeff Gill
Our news sheet was very personalised this week, thanks to Google Earth:
The pub where we meet is touching the y in the copyright notice. The town just of the right of the i61 is Conwy.
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tags: design,
i61
DIY design 5 - toolbox: images
15 April 2008 Jeff Gill
Okay, you’ve got a computer and some page layout software. It’s time to make something, but you need some images, and when you find some you will probably need to work on them. So where do you find images and how do you go from this…
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tags: design
Six proof-reading tips
8 April 2008 Jeff Gill
Access Elevation is a behind the scenes blog of a young, fast-growing multi-site church. Their graphic designer Ryan Hollingsworth has posted six very good tips for avoiding the dreaded typo. Go read them.
Mr Hollingsworth also wrote:
Good design goes a long way when you’re developing print materials for your church. But it quickly can become all for naught if your print piece comes back from the printer with misspelled word or misplaced period. Like a pimple on prom night, it doesn’t matter how pretty your dress is – everyone else is only seeing the zit. Without good proofing, one glaring error that would have taken just a second to fix now seemingly negates hours of quality design work.
Notice the word seemingly. This is important. You’ve probably realised by now that the pimple on prom night isn’t disaster they told you it was in the Clearasil ads.
Do follow Ryan’s advice. Make sure at least three people proof everything important. But when a mistake slips through, remember: It’s just a pimple.
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tags: design,
writing
DIY design 4 - toolbox: page layout software
7 April 2008 Jeff Gill
You have a computer. What software do you put on it?
Everything that you make, except for websites, is going to end up on a page. (Of course, that ‘page’ may be a bulletin, poster, sign, business card, booklet or PDF.) If you are going to build a page, you need page layout software. For decent page layout there are only 2.5 choices.
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tags: design
DIY design 3 - toolbox: hardware
31 March 2008 Jeff Gill
Before I get to the how-to’s I’m going to spend some time on the tools. Whether you are the equivalent of a master joiner or a gangly kid in his first woodworking class, you can’t cut wood without a saw, unless you are also a ninja.
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tags: design
DIY design 2 - attitudes
27 March 2008 Jeff Gill
The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart. —Jesus
What you design will be no better than what is inside you. Here are five attitudes that are very useful to you whether you are a world-famous graphic designer or an absolute DIY design beginner.
I am a learner. Why not put everything you know about making stuff up for grabs? I’ve found that pretending to know nothing serves me far better than pretending to know a lot. Ask lots of questions. Be grateful for the answers, even the ones that point out where you got it wrong – especially the ones that point out where you got it wrong.
I fail fearlessly. Why wait for me to write this whole series before you try something new? Take what you know and give it a twist. Do it backwards or in orange or on video or by hand or only with pictures or without any pictures. What’s the worst that can happen? Probably a hundred people will wonder what you were on about and the universe will carry on as normal. Remember Edison’s 10,000 light bulbs that didn’t work. There is always a chance you will succeed wildly.
I want to be effective, not cool. The point of the things you make is to communicate, not to look good. Make things that connect with your audience, not things that show off your cleverness. Strive for unselfconsciousness. The difference between the things most churches (and small businesses) produce and the things that Look Really Cool is the difference between crap and shiny crap. You don’t want either, and your message deserves better.
I serve the mission. Well-designed communication is a powerful tool to help you move your church and community where you want to go. But make sure that what you design is serving your direction instead of trying to set it. Forcing an image or clever visual onto a mission that it doesn’t fit is selfish and unhelpful. It gets you no where.
I have fun!
(If you don’t think you can have these five attitudes, it is probably a good idea to delegate your church’s design responsibilities to someone else.)
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tags: design
DIY design 1 - introduction
26 March 2008 Jeff Gill
This is the start of a series of articles about practical things that will be useful to people in small creative churches (and sometimes business).
For those of you who don’t know, I am not just one of the pastors at my church, I am also a *world-famous graphic designer.
See the holy light of creativity shining from my mind? That’s why I’m world-famous.
If your church is anything like mine, you produce all or almost all of your leaflets, posters, handouts, ads, etc. in house. But, unlike my church, your’s probably doesn’t have a world-famous graphic designer to design all those pieces of communication. That’s why I am writing this series.
I am here to Save The Day.
At no charge to you.
In less than 600 steps I am going to help you create effective communications materials for your church (or small business).
For Free.
You should tell everyone you know who does a bit of DIY design for their church or business about this series. They may find it Very Useful. Before you decide not to tell anyone, please consider this true story: A man in County Cork Ireland didn’t email anyone about an article I wrote. He died three days later.**
*I live in Wales and my mother in Tucson, Arizona is very proud of me.
**It is probably illegal for me not to tell you that the man’s death was very likely not connected to my article. He didn’t know I had written it. But still…
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tags: design
Happy Valentine's Day
9 March 2008 Jeff Gill
I haven’t posted this until now because I wanted some time to pass after the week when super designer Marian Bantjes gave a more creative valentine to me (and all her other clients) than I gave to my beloved wife.
In early February one of Marian’s Trademark translucent envelopes came through the door. It contained eight little pink squares. After a bit Christine figured out what they spelled:
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tags: design,
holidays
Grids
13 February 2008 Jeff Gill
In which I neatly jump from graphic designers’ grid systems to the internet’s most famous archdruid to the historian Arnold Toynbee to a church in North Carolina to the bible to you.
Image borrowed from Mark Boulton’s grid systems design tutorial
Graphic designers use grids…
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tags: church,
design,
john michael greer,
leadership