Design

TRANSCRIPT

If we want to reach people today through personal ministry, digital evangelism, or local church outreach, we need to be able to implement some basic laws of design. Through these standards we can produce and promote products that will be to be visually pleasing and more readily accepted.

Event fliers, church signs, websites, images we post, videos we produce, all of it; needs to be tastefully designed.

You have heard it said, “don’t judge a book by its cover.”However, this is exactly what everyone does!

If a book has a poorly designed cover, I won’t be reading it. If your church is unkempt, overgrown, and ugly, will anyone want to step inside?

If a flyer, promoting an upcoming event is poorly designed, you cannot expect to see a large turn out.

There is no doubt that the information we have as a church is beautiful, but people may not see it from the outside, so we need to invite them in to see it.

That invitation needs to be pretty.

I am not musical. I can't sing or play an instrument with skill. While I can sing as a part of the crowd Sabbath mornings, You wouldn't want to hear me lead song service or hold a concert.

If you are not a designer, if you don’t have the eye for what is visually pleasing, hire it done.

Before you print something, take a look at the thing you want to present to the world and then look at professional examples that cover the same subject matter; if there’s a discrepancy, resolve it. And if you don’t know how to resolve it, find someone that does.

This is so important because we are such a visual culture. Good design is the bare minimum requirement.

Not everyone is a designer, and that is okay because we all have access to resources like Canva.com

Canva can help you make beautiful flyers, social media posts, slides for church… basically everything. And it does so by giving you a template to work from, and all of the work is done online, on their website. No software to download or steep learning curve, it’s a beautiful thing, literally.

Some of the templates are free, and others cost a few dollars. It is certainly worth trying out, and if you find yourself using it a lot, they also have a subscription plan that may save you some money.

If you are feeling a bit more adventurous and want to learn the professional programs, that’s great! Adobe Creative Cloud is the industry standard. If your church is using this specifically for church things, get in touch with me, and I may be able to help you with non-profit pricing.

There are endless resources available for you to learn these programs.

I learned best by using templates, sources like Envato were perfect, I would reverse engineer the templates to adjust them as I wanted and was happy with the results.

If you don’t want to get into designing and would prefer a more skilled person do it.

You may consider something like designpickle.com where you pay a monthly fee to have unlimited access to a graphic designer. Or, reach out to me and perhaps I could help or point you to some people I know.

In the description below, I have a link to an article explaining the basic elements of design, but I wanted to share just one of them here.

Space, just because space exists, doesn’t mean we should fill it.

The amount of space that is “empty” is just as important as the space that is “filled.” In the same way we wouldn't say, “Hey, who left that space in between the pews!? we need to get some more seats in here!" We need to leave space in our design with reasonable proximity between objects and also between objects and borders, the margins.

When it comes to designing things for the church. Take time to explore adventist.design and see the ways to properly showcase our church logo.

There are lots of free downloads there, and you can find helpful things for your church and maybe even inspiration for your own personal digital evangelism.

I pray this video series has been a blessing to you, and will help you and your church to share the freedom, healing, and hope that is available in Jesus through the Bible.