There's nothing casual about the message in the video above other than the fact that it's a lot easier for me to post a video than to dream up and type out a coherent post late on a Friday...so happy casual Friday to me :)

But being the Friday that I get paid, I'm about to walk out of the office and head over to the bank to cash my paycheck. As I do that and by God's grace as I go through every day that He grants me on this earth, I want to be thinking about the challenge in this video.

I want to encourage you to do the same.

Although I didn't have designs on this, and the inspiration for todays and yesterdays posts came from entirely disparate sources, this post is actually closely tied with the thoughts I shared yesterday.

Back in October of last year, Christian Computing Magazine published an interesting article that contained statistics indicating that the most used portion of church websites is the “I'm New” section - pages related to people attending for the first time, those who are looking for service times or locations, those looking for other information about the church and its beliefs and doctrine, or those who have no knowledge of Jesus Christ.

I think a lot of people would read the statistics supporting that article and even if it's only in the back of their minds, presume that they indicate that churches are doing a great job at outreach on the web. However, just like website hits aren't a measure of a sites success, but rather quality of those hits are, this statistic requires qualification.

The truth of the matter is that “more than 80% of the current growth registered by Protestant churches is biological or transfer growth – very little of the growth comes from penetrating the ranks of the unchurched.” (George Barna, Grow Your Church from the Outside In)

That's a critically important piece of information to consider because it makes you ask the question, 'Are the “I'm New” sections of our sites truly representative of us doing a great job of serving those outside of our church communities, or are they just examples of us serving a modern desire to jump from church community to church community?'

If it's the latter then these stats, although valuable, become more of an argument to change or adjust the strategy than they are a statement of web usability success.

It's disconcerting that in 2010 we still have to talk about this, but the fact is, we do, so here goes:

The number of clicks that you get on your website is not the measure of success of the website. You have to begin to consider the quality of those hits.

Is the person hanging around on pages, are they coming back again and most importantly, are they 'converting' (a.k.a. taking some measurable action on the site like signing up, donating or filling out a contact form)?

You could have 1,000 hits an hour but if they aren't converting or gaining something valuable from you in the experience, then they aren't a sign of success...in fact, quite the opposite is true.

Google Analytics can help with that so think about using that free tool to help evaluate the state of your site.

Back in 2005, the Canadian Olympic Committee, VANOC (Vancouver Organizing Committee) and Canada's sport federations established a very aggressive program (especially for Canada) called 'We Own the Podium', which was meant to inspire Canadian athletes to push harder than they ever had before and set Canada up to win the Vancouver Olympic Games.

Yesterday, only half-way through the Games, the Canadian Olympic Committee rescinded the program acknowledging that there was no way Canada could win...a fairly embarrassing thing to have to concede.

As I was driving home from Toronto yesterday, I heard the announcement and some commentary on a local radio station and I was immediately reminded of a rule of branding that I have come to have great respect for but isn't appreciated by many:

Self-aggrandizement is a dangerous and most often unsuccessful communications and branding strategy.

For years, companies and organizations loved to set themselves up as the #1 in their industry or area of service, but that strategy doesn't have legs, especially in these days of blogging and Twitter feeds where customers have voice to mass audiences in moments.

People don't want to hear you tell them you are #1, they want you to make them #1.

We rationalize ourselves into thinking that by saying we are #1, the internal team of the organization will be motivated and use that challenge to move forward and actually become #1. But imagine walking into a party of people you'd never met and saying, "Hey everyone, you should come talk to me because I am the best." Ridiculous right? And yet, this is exactly how many organizations choose to position themselves.

Spend your time making the people that you serve #1. Do that, and you'll not only be first in your hearts and minds, but more importantly, you'll be first in theirs. That's effective branding.

Monday Morning Misdemeanors is a series of weekly posts written by Graphic Designer, Derek Gyssels. In this series, Derek is going to hone in on a number of common problems that crop up in graphic designs and then give you the tools to avoid them which will give your designs a professional polish.

Before I get started I would like the record to show that I myself am a former and rehabilitated drop shadow abuser. This has been an issue I have noticed for a long time but it seems in the last few weeks my attention has been drawn to how often drop shadows ruin a design. A long time ago, before I even knew graphic design as a job option, drop shadows were hard to produce for graphic pieces. Then in the early/mid 90's technology and software advancements made them achievable with a few clicks of the mouse. Since then, drop shadows have become as prevalent in design as cheese hats are at a Green Bay Packers game, and not to mention, just as stylish.

What is the actual infraction here? Most times it's one of three things to do with the application. For an example I will draw on something I saw in a menu at a restaurant two weekends ago.

Issue 1: Whoever had designed the menu took the time to take pictures of most of the menu items and crop them out to place them into the menu. Then they foolishly thought to add drop shadows in what I will assume was an attempt to make them "pop" (a term I really dislike) or add some dimension. The problem here however was that the pictures were shot from a 3/4 angle so the drop shadow actually served to make the food pictures look like flat cutouts floating off the page.

Issue 2: The second problem with them was the colour of the drop shadow. There was a nice background to the menu and the colour of the drop shadow did not mesh well with it. My guess was that they just used the default black that Photoshop or other design apps provide you with when you first apply the style. To correct something like this think about your own shadow on a summer day on the grass or the sand at the beach. While your shadow is for the most part a black/grey elements of the environment play a role in the final colour of the shadow. Light bounces all over the place influencing colour. Thats why your shadow isn't solid black, because other light reflecting from different sources in the environment reduce how dark the shadow is. This leads nicely into the third infraction.

Issue 3: The edges or "feathering" of shadows is a major issue as well. Again, let's imagine you're outside on a summer day. Have you ever seen your shadow with a big fuzzy edge? I don't think so, because neither have I. If you are adding a drop shadow to something like a well-lit plate of food you should have a drop shadow with a fairly crisp edge.

All three of these problems originate from a single issue, “auto styles”. Most applications give you the ability to simply add styles to layers or objects but those defaults don't do work for all scenarios. As the designer, it is up to you to adjust your settings to make things work. A lot of times your design would benefit from a custom shadow using layers, filters and blending modes. But that is a whole different ball of wax and I believe points to a final issue.

Drop shadows are best used for flat objects like a book on a table, photograph or any other object your looking at from directly above. Drop shadows are also great on menus or boxes in website design that you're simply trying to add a little extra emphasis to do. Occasionally you can even use a drop shadow on type if the type is on an image or busy background, but even that takes some caution and finesse.

So there you have it, a fairly simple over view of drop shadow use and abuse. I would be happy to answer any questions or comments, simply leave one on this post and I will reply.

So, we're friends right?

I mean, if you were to stumble onto something that pretty much changed your life, you'd drop me a note wouldn't you?

Well, it's on the basis of that mutual care and concern for each other that I bring you today's post.

You see, I've been a coffee drinker for a number of years now. Admittedly, I have tried to stop drinking that beverage on a few occasions over the past year for a number of reasons, but of late I've found myself once again succumbing to it's Siren call. I had designs on another attempt at a cold turkey quit, but as of yesterday, I fear those designs have been replaced with an even greater commitment to the bean beverage.

What happened to cause such a drastic change in my approach to coffee? In a word: Tassimo

We often compare new inventions as being the best thing since 'sliced bread'. Well, move over bread, because now you are just the distant relative (a few times removed) to the new measure of best inventions.

For those of you who aren't familiar, the Tassimo machine is a modern technological wonder. Within about a minute of addressing the machine, one can have a perfectly controlled and brewed cup of steaming hot coffee in his or her hand. There is no argument over how many scoops of grinds need to be added to the machine, you simply place the drink disc in the machine, your cup in the dispensing area and hit go. It's so beautiful and easy, just thinking about it has caused my eyes to glisten.

Do I have what amounts to an unhealthy relationship with coffee and now this new coffee-making machine? Perhaps.

But for you coffee lovers out there who share in my desire for a quality cup of Joe each morning, late morning, early afternoon, late afternoon, and evening (and late evening), the Tassimo will be a life-changing experience.

Consider it my gift to you.

Hello fellow blog readers. This is Derek writing you with the announcement of a new recurring post that will be appearing on day one of your work week. Starting on Monday you can look forward to “Monday Morning Misdemeanors” which are going to being looking into the petty crimes committed in the world of graphic design.

So often a design that could hold some merit is robbed of its dignity by a handful of details that are either overlooked or unnecessarily forced onto the page. Well, those days are going to be long gone in the next few weeks because you are going to get your education on the law books of graphic design.

Most of us have heard that ignorance of the law is not justification for breaking it. We know this to be especially true of God's law. Once we came to know the truth, we saw the error in our former selves and conduct ourselves in a new way. The same is true here, once you start to apply some better principles to your design work and become conscious of the most common errors you are going to see design in a whole new light. There will come a day when you will look back at the work you used to create and see a professional difference. We know that a lot of you out there run on tight budgets and often find yourselves doing more than just your job. That may see you straying into the realm of design. These posts will help you take your work to a new level.

I have been doing design full time for over 10 years now and still learn new things. It takes a lot of work and effort to be a good designer. These weekly posts will be a step in the right direction. At the end of the day they will only serve to add quality and credibility to your branding efforts.

So before you commit 3 or 4 misdemeanors on a daily basis, resulting in a file being created in your name as a repeat offender and have your charges upgraded to felonious misuse of design, please check this post out on Monday mornings. It will be worth your time.

God is doing some great things these days in aligning like-minded men and women from across the continent to fight pornography. A good friend of mine, Francois Driessen is joining a number of leaders next week in Michigan at the Covenant Eyes headquarters to shoot a documentary called “Scratching the Surface”.

You can read more about the meeting on the Covenant Eyes website.

You can read more about the documentary on the Willful Entrapment website.

May God be glorified in all that they do. Please pray for their safe travel and for the meetings that will take place over the three days.

As a follow-up post to my blog entry last week entitled Google Buzz, you may want to use caution before diving right in. According to ZdNet, a popular internet news source, Google has really dropped the ball when it comes to privacy in its first Buzz release. Here is a quote from the article:

“Ever since questions about how safe your personal information is with Google Buzz started to pop up, it’s pretty much all that people talk about on the subject. That, and how to disable it that is.

This release of Google Buzz has started off badly, and when that happens, the barrier to adoption is significantly raised. The service may be cool, or useful, but all that people think about now is how unsafe it is, and make decisions based on those feelings.

Google has already taken some steps to make it better in reaction to what has happened, but I’m not sure anything they do is really going to help. Their best bet would be to take down the service, step back and analyze what has happened, and do a re-launch.”

You can read the full article here.

Earlier this week, Google launched its latest invention, Google Buzz. The simplest way to describe Google Buzz is that it's Twitter integrated with your Gmail account. Many people think that Google has come into the social networking game a little late and that they can't compete with Facebook and Twitter. But historically speaking, Google always seems to find a way to make an impact on any market that it touches.

It will be interesting to see how ministries, churches and businesses use Google Buzz in the coming year. Will it be a success or a flop? Only time will tell.

For more information on Google Buzz, visit www.google.com/buzz.

Take a minute to stop and think about the relationship between your website and your actual physical building.

A website, like a building, is a vitally important part of who you are and how you do what you do as a ministry, but it's only as good as the roads that lead to it. You'd never build your church in the middle of a farmers field with no roads or paths to get to it. Similarly, it makes no sense to make a significant investment in a website without considering how you're going to get people to show up there.

S.E.O., or Search Engine Optimization is undoubtedly one of the things to consider here, but it doesn't stop there.

Offsite strategies like sharing content with other related ministries/non-profits, posting your video content on a YouTube channel and re-purposing it on your organizational site and even strategies like billboards and print materials can all be effective means to drive traffic to your site as well and they can draw in those people who didn't even know they were looking for you.

So think bigger picture. You'll maximize your return on investment in your website if you do.

One of the things that we often find ourselves encouraging our clients to do is to be true to their brand. Or in other words, to be true to themselves. It's an important reminder that we all need at times because we tend to get off track.

Our modern church culture is such that many smaller churches look to the model churches like Willow Creek, Mosaic, North Point, Mars Hill, Hillsong and LifeChurch.tv for inspiration in their activities and approaches to ministry.

But while looking to those churches for inspiration is a fine idea, you need to always be asking yourself the hard question: "Does what I'm looking at taking away from these other church communities fit who we (your church community) are?"

That can be a tough question because the answer might force you to abandon something that you personally are really attached to and excited about. But those kinds of bigger picture checks and balances will serve to keep you on track, doing things that your community will excel in because the play or the song the outreach activity or the small group structure is representative of who you are.

This is what our world needs to see. Church communities that are being real.

But to be real to those outside the church, we first have to get real with ourselves.

Over the course of the last year, we've made numerous additions and improvements to AdvancedMinistry. One of the most recent additions was the Secure Intranet, which has been very well received. As we press forward in 2010, we won't be slowing down any time soon when it comes to new improvements. In fact, we have a number of things already lined up for this year, some of which include:

• A redesigned back-end admin panel with better statistical reporting
• Conversion of most AM 2.0 templates to AM 3.0.
• Addition of many new templates
• A mobile browser version of AdvancedMinistry
• Continued improvements to the recurring events engine
• Continued improvements on the blog engine
   

Those are some of the major ones, with many minor additions in the works as well.

All of that said, our most important indicator for additions and improvements is your (client) feedback. We've had tons of it so far we welcome even more!

Please feel free to submit a ticket or post a comment on this blog if you have anything that you'd like us to be working on. We keep an ongoing list of client suggestions and it never hurts to add a few more (no matter how big or how small).

For years we've been getting asked by people as to whether or not we have a business version of AdvancedMinistry. Well the wait is finally over! Introducing BarkBuilder (beta), AdvancedMinistry's business platform. With BarkBuilder, entrepreneurs can now use the power behind AdvancedMinistry in their businesses!

BarkBuilder is named after Electricurrent's sister company, Bark Communications. Whereas Electricurrent (the creators of AdvancedMinistry) focus on building brands for ministries, Bark Communications focuses on building brands for businesses. Both companies employ the same group of people; it's simply two different marketing arms.

To view BarkBuilder, visit www.barkbuilder.com. From there, select an industry -- “Business Edition” will be the one you want. (We are currently in the process of forming partnerships in different industries so that we can offer specific versions of the platform to each industry, thereby enhancing the experience of each one.)

We are very excited to finally have BarkBuilder off the ground and into beta (testing) mode. Over the next few months, both AdvancedMinistry and BarkBuilder will continue to grow and expand in its service offering. Both platforms are built off of the exact same codebase, meaning that if we make a major addition to one platform, the other benefits as well! Additionally, if we find a bug in one platform, one simple fix will cover both AdvancedMinistry and BarkBuilder.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask. We are very excited to see what the Lord has in store for the upcoming year!

As a follow up to the article I posted yesterday, I read an interesting article today on CNet entitled “HTML vs. Flash: Can a turf war be avoided?” If your interested in the future of Flash and how it will affect your organization, this article is an interesting read. Here is a quote from the article:

“HTML vs. Flash has the potential to become a religious war. As long as there have been programming languages, there have been arguments about which tool is the best for getting the job done, and this issue has some extra elements that add some emotion to the mix.

There are plenty of Firefox-using open-source fans who chafe at proprietary plug-ins, and they're accustomed to making their opinions heard. Another group enjoys bashing Flash as a conduit for in-your-face online advertising. Add a little Apple iPad love-hate invective into the mix, and you've got great potential for Flash bashing...

...Indeed, it's probably wiser to take a deep breath and accept that both technologies will prevail and neither will conquer the other any time soon.”

For anyone that's been following the recent news of Apple's new iPad, one of the most apparent things that people noticed (besides its lack of GPS and camera) was it's inability to display Flash within websites. Apple seems to blame it on Adobe, but Adobe today released a very interesting response which can be found here.

As we move into the next five years, it will be interesting to see whether or not Flash will play a critical role in websites as we know them today. HTML 5 offers a lot of new features and technologies, but as to whether or not it's a replacement to Flash, the jury is still out.

Here is the third fulfilled request for an Xpiritmental wallpaper. This one was from a friend of mine and it will be interesting to talk to him and see what he thinks and if it came close to any of the ideas he may have had. This design centres on Matthew 7:13-14 where Jesus explains the difference between the wide and narrow gates and where the paths lead for those that enter them. I was about to recreate a PowerPoint slide I did last year for these verses at a larger size, but then another idea hit me. I created this large labyrinth maze as a visual for the scripture. The cool thing here is that the maze actually works, there is a solution for it. So not only will it nicely decorate your monitor but when you have some free time you can actually work on finding your way through it.

I am looking forward to comments from those that are frustrated by it and and those that are able to solve it.

Xpiritmental No. 66
The Narrow Gate
Matthew 7:13-14



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