Today marks the ten-year anniversary of Electricurrent. Thank you to all who have supported us over the years!

Click here for our full press release.

To God be the glory!

Today's Casual Friday comes from an ESPN article that was referred to me by a friend, called "Compassion and Competition".

The Coles Notes version is this: A softball team that hadn't lost a game in 2 1/2 years -- a team that was going to win in a landslide -- purposely offered to declare defeat so that they could spend 2 hours helping a younger team get better by taking the time to mentor them instead.

You can read the full article here.

I can't help but think of churches when I read this article. Instead of competing with other churches in our towns and cities, wouldn't it be better to take some time to help out our neighboring churches?

"Love your neighbor as yourself." I believe that goes for churches as well.

Welcome to Show & Tell, a weekly feature that focuses on the work of ministries within the Electricurrent and AdvancedMinistry clientele.

This week's feature is Scratching the Surface.

Scratching the Surface is an independent film initiative aimed at connecting people with key champions from the battlefront against pornography. Director Francois Driessen and his team engages important topics that arises from the saturation of pornography within our culture and the church, and allows the audience to actively participate in the the filmmaking process via social media. You can read more about their ministry by visiting www.scratchingthesurfacedoc.com.

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. This week's feature is actually "TMM" because we are posting it on a Tuesday (seeing that Monday was a holiday in Canada).

This week I want to address a few typography fundamentals that will help you with your design work.

Most of the following tips will help with laying out professional looking type for print and web design so lets start by defining a few terms

Kerning: the adjusting of space between individual pairs of letters to improve appearance and legibility.

Tracking: the adjusting of letter spacing of a larger body of text.

Leading: the amount of space between lines of type measured from the baseline of one line of type to the baseline of the line of type above or below.

Baseline: the imaginary line on which text rests.

Line Length: the length of a line of type.

Widow: is a single word that belongs to a body of copy but has been isolated by itself on a line or the top of a column or new page by itself.

Orphan: is a sentence that starts a paragraph and has been isolated by itself at the bottom of a column or page.

There are a lot of rules that can be followed to improve the appearance and readability of type that add up to a piece of design looking a lot better than the next guys. Conversely, if ignored, you are the next guy.

Kerning needs to be respected in all type larger than 18 point or so. You are not expected to go through page after page of reading text and manually adjust all the space between all letters. Where kerning is key is headlines in advertising and logo design.

Tracking is what you would want to use to adjust the letter spacing of an entire page of reading text to either squeeze in a bit more copy or open it up slightly to make it a little more airy. Generally, I avoid doing too much with tracking as too much or too little inhibits smooth reading for the end user.

Leading is a big element of type that often goes ignored or abused. The space that you allow for readers between rows of type is pretty well the most critical factor to readability. This coupled with line length can make or break a report, book or brochure. A few quick points for improving leading are:

• The longer or wider the paragraph is the larger the leading should be.
• The leading value in points should be approximately 25% higher than the size of the type. This also depends on the typeface being used and should be considered in light of the point above.
• Never abuse leading to cram more copy onto a page. What good is it to have lots of copy if people are going to be repelled from reading it?
   

Line length is another huge factor in readability. If your lines of type are too long it makes it difficult for the readers eye to finish a line and quickly find the next to make reading smooth. If line length is too short, it makes the reader break too often always having the eye go back-and-forth constantly starting new lines.

Widows and orphans are fussy details but once I learned of them, they scream at me every time I see them. They really interrupt readability and cause unnecessary visual noise in a composition. Some times they can be fixed by manipulating tracking and leading. Often times the best solution is to re-word a sentence or two so they are shorter and remove the issue the widow or orphan is causing.

Lastly, NEVER SQUISH OR DISTORT TYPE TO MAKE IT FIT OR TO FILL UP A PAGE!

Always do your best to love your type in a piece of work. At the end of the day if your audience is repelled from reading they are not receiving the messages you need them to receive. This translates to you working in vain. This might sound overblown but it is one of the many factors that defines your brand and separates success from failures.

Here's a fun exercise, study your mail when you get home and look at the typography on all the various things you get day-after-day. Make piles of the things you enjoy looking at and reading and the things that you couldn't be bothered reading. Study the physical differences between the two piles and make some mental notes. It's often the typography that put the "junk" in junk mail. The bigger, more professional companies will have well-designed pieces of communication with nice, attractive and easy to read type. The funny thing is that the size of a company has nothing to do with it. Your work can compete with anyone if done right.

We are pleased to announce "Planted by Water", a new AdvancedMinistry template inspired by Jeremiah 17:7-8. You can view a preview of the new template here.

As usual, all AM 3.0 templates are fully customizable including the ability to change the number of columns, colors, fonts, etc. If you would like to use a simplified version of your home page, edit your template, click the Layout Tab and choose "Hide All Columns (Simplified Home Page)". Resource files for the new template can be found in the "Download Materials" menu under "Template Resource Files".

To change your template at any time, login to your AdvancedMinistry account and select "Choose My Template".

A few weeks back I had an opportunity to hear Jim Collins, author of books like Built to Last, Good to Great and more recently, How the Mighty Fall, speak on the topic of marks of great leaders.

In his talk, Jim made the following statement: "The signature of the greatest executives is humility".

You may ask, what's Andrew doing talking about executives on a blog about marketing and communications. Well, if you haven't picked up on it yet from following along with us, we here believe that your marketing and branding flow out of all aspects of your company, and leadership is a key part of that.

It's vitally important to have leaders that live, act and work in a way that is consistent with the brand of the company. In a time when authenticity, openness and humility are the hallmarks of good branding and marketing, then it follows that the leaders of those organizations need to have a consistent attitude, lending validity to Jim's statement above.

We need leaders who are able to put aside their personal agendas, who aren't afraid to say that they got it wrong and who are able to look at their team around them and say the best part of leading this group of people is this group of people...the ideas, passion and energy that they bring to the the table that enable the organization as a whole to fulfill its objectives.

Find that kind of a leader and you've got the kind of person that will enable your organization to do great things.

Welcome to Show & Tell, a weekly feature that focuses on the work of ministries within the Electricurrent and AdvancedMinistry clientele.

This week's feature is Core Student Ministries.

You can read more about their ministry by visiting www.wlayouth.org.

We have arrived at the final week of the Photoshop Realism series. So far we have covered everything I promised to cover which included Lighting Issues, Perspective Problems, Cloning Catastrophes and Clumsy Compositions. This week I am going to finish off with Extraction Errors, which is a short problem to describe so I am going to throw in a bit of a blooper reel at the end as an added treat.

Let me start off by explaining what extraction means. Some of you may be more familiar with the term close cropping which means the same thing as extraction. Extraction means isolating an object in one image so it can be taken out and used in another image. It can be a tricky process but Photoshop offers a number of different methods to make the task easier. However, sometimes there are no shortcuts and the labor intensive route has to be taken to ensure the quality of your work.

In this image it appears that the walkie-talkie was taken off of a white background but the creator didn't cut in enough to not leave a faint white ghost around the outside of the product. It is a small nagging detail I know, but it takes away from the professional and polished look that should be desired.

Anytime you're taking an object or person out of one image for use in another there is a great deal of care that needs to be taken to assure your not making an error that is going to take away from the message you're trying to convey. I think a lot of time most people don't notice such things but I don't believe that is reason enough to not hold yourself to the highest standard in your branding/marketing efforts. Take some time and get into some tutorials to learn some new methods of extraction. Learn one a month and in a year you will be a pro.

I don't think I need to tell anyone that stealing is wrong. Anytime you see an image with a water mark of a stock company present indicates that the image was stolen. Stock photography for the most part is very cheap so there is no excuse for going to these sites and taking the previews they offer and misusing them.

This one is subtle and I have to be honest and say I don't understand what was gained by this manipulation. If you look at the angle in which Sandra Bullock's arm comes down and then look at the location of her elbow in relation to her arm it would seem she is a little disfigured.

What needs to be said about this image? That hand looks completely gross and unnatural.

While the creator of this image got the lighting and perspective right on the woman that was added to the umbrella her reflection in the water was completely overlooked.

This guys hand and neck look very unnatural. All the proportions feel wrong. His hand looks to small which makes his head look to big. Or maybe it's the other way around. Why is his neck so smooth? Maybe he just had that good of a shave?

I have to say I really enjoyed writing this series. Sourcing all of these images took sometime but I think it was well worth it. I hope you learned a lot about the various issues that designers face and can better work around that many pitfalls of trying to work in Photoshop. Furthermore I hope your senses were heightened to be aware of all the fraudulent and deceptive imagery we take in day after day. I also hope that inspired you to not be part of that very problem and that you think creatively and honestly when you create your branding/marketing pieces.

Don't forget that we are here to serve you if you need help with anything and I am happy to answer questions if you have any.

A little more than a year ago, I took up running and it occurred to me late last week that it really is amazing how it has changed the way I think.

If I look at a picture of a beautiful scene with a road or a path in it like the one above, one of the first things that comes to my mind these days is: "Wow, that would be an awesome place to run!"

I never used to think like that. But now, without any conscious effort, as a result of a year's worth of just getting out and doing it, running has become a concept that is easily called upon by many different outside influences.

Which makes me think that it's a great metaphor for effective communications.

The way that running comes to my mind when I see a picture of an open road, is a great example of the kind of recognition that you as a company, non-profit or ministry-based organization want to have available to call upon in the minds of your audience.

The tough thing is that it takes time and effort to develop that kind of top-of-mind thinking in your audience. Repeated exposure to quality materials that communicate your brand messaging over a long period of time builds this kind of recognition. Like running, it can feel like a long and arduous journey at times, but it's so worth the effort.

Because once it's developed, that kind of brand recognition not only makes future communications easier, it actually has broader-reaching effects as it even informs the way people enter an interaction with you (i.e. trusting or wary).

So set your "running plan", so to speak, and stick to it with an eye for quality and consistency. Don't allow yourself to short-cut that plan because that will affect future performance.

There's no such thing as a one-off project in an organization that communicates effectively.

Welcome to Show & Tell, a weekly feature that focuses on the work of ministries within the Electricurrent and AdvancedMinistry clientele.

This week's feature is Open Door Community Church.

You can read more about their ministry by visiting www.youropendoorchurch.com.

This weeks topic is going to surround composition. It is sort of similar to the perspective talk from two weeks ago but there is a little wrinkle. Composition is examining the placement of objects in their environment in relation to other objects. It's not so much about angles as it is about things that just plain don't make sense. The examples for this week are some classic scenarios where people were in a rush and forced things, have no eye for detail, or flat-out didn't know what they we're doing.

Where is the rest of this little boys body?

Go-go gadget baby arm!

Either that woman has a shrunken head or she keeps her Cheerio's near a nuclear reactor.

I hope this kid grows into those pontoons he has for feet.

The Turkish airlines have been budget cutting by getting rid of those costly front landing gear assemblies.

Do you ever look in the mirror and not like what you see? So does Lexar, because this reflection demonstrates a gross oversight.

Sometimes a composition is wrong for what's missing. But not here, the invisible man is doing the burnout in the convertible.

To me, everyone of these are hilarious, to the creators, not so much. It is so important to be thorough and detail-focused when creating graphic pieces to advertise or market yourself. What good is it to spend money on a message when the message is missed because some glaring error is all the audience can focus on. After all your work is done it is critically important to run your work past other people and get reactions and comments. In our office we are all covering each others backs to make sure things like this don't happen in anything we produce.

Also, make sure to respect professional designers and the strengths they posses. A lot of these kinds of errors occur when people that don't have the formal training or experience attempt to do things themselves to save money. Photoshop is a great tool but in the wrong hands, a lot of terrible things can happen, as I have demonstrated over the last few weeks.

Lastly, take a moment and consider this comparison.

Have you ever wrote a paper or an article then after proofing and reproofing you still find an error after it has been published or submitted? How do we do that? In reading we know what we wanted to say and after working on something for so long we read what we meant to write, not what we actually wrote. The same thing can happen in design. After spending hours and sometimes days on a piece you get tired and stop looking at things like you should, or the false reality we created on our screen starts to look real to us. If you can afford the time, leave a design for a couple days and come back to it with fresh eyes. In the very least, get some outside perspective from a few other people you trust and respect. You could end up sparing yourself and your organization a lot of pain and embarrassment.

To conclude, I would like you to take sometime this week and consider the false things we see all the time and how we are becoming more and more accustomed to seeing things that aren't real and even expect and prefer those false realities. For example if you go to any store and have to wait in line, take note of the magazine covers. People don't look anything like media and advertising would have us believe but if they put a real person unaltered on a cover, we would think it looks wrong. Does that seem weird to you? It does to me. I sometimes wonder what this condition will do to us in the long term. But now I am just getting philosophical on you again. Please leave me some comments, I would love to discuss this further.

Earlier today I was listening to one of my favorite songs. It's called 'Belief' by John Mayer. I've copied the lyrics from that song on this blog before. But today, the first verse really caught my attention and I wanted to share it with you:

Is there anyone who
Ever remembers changing their mind from
The paint on a sign?
Is there anyone who really recalls
Ever breaking rank at all
For something someone yelled real loud one time

John's making an excellent observation about how small an impact something like a sign or a person yelling at cars driving by them can have. Inadvertently, he's communicating a truth about communications that so many people get wrong.

Real, impacting change in people's lives, whether it pertains to a product, a service or even a religion happens most often in relationship. Outside of a relationship with your audience, you cannot hope to market your product, service or even beliefs with any great success.

As one example, so many people hail social media as the silver bullet to all our marketing needs. What they miss is that it's not social media that is the silver bullet, it's relationship. Social media tools like Facebook and Twitter are simply the mediums that allow us to connect in a way and frequency that we've never been able to before.

But at the end of the day, it's still all just about relationship. Just like good marketing has always been.

So when you stop to think about your marketing and communications plans, think seriously about how you plan to build relationship through every medium you are considering. That's the silver bullet.

We are pleased to announce "Turbine", a new AdvancedMinistry template that was remodeled from our corporate platform, BarkBuilder. You can view a preview of the new template here.

As usual, all AM 3.0 templates are fully customizable including the ability to change the number of columns, colors, fonts, etc. If you would like to use a simplified version of your home page, edit your template, click the Layout Tab and choose "Hide All Columns (Simplified Home Page)". Resource files for the new template can be found in the "Download Materials" menu under "Template Resource Files".

To change your template at any time, login to your AdvancedMinistry account and select "Choose My Template".

Welcome to Show & Tell, a weekly feature that focuses on the work of ministries within the Electricurrent and AdvancedMinistry clientele.

This week's feature is Evangelical Mennonite Conference.

You can read more about their ministry by visiting www.emconference.ca.

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.

Here we are on another Monday morning and I can't believe I have completed ten Monday Morning Misdemeanors already. This week I am continuing on our voyage through Photoshop Realism. This week's topic is cloning controversies.

Allow me to start this topic by explaining what cloning is. In Photoshop ("PS") there is a tool called "Rubber Stamp". What this tool allows you to so is sample one area of an image then use a brush on another part of the image and paint, or clone, the sampled area. This is a great tool for many photo retouching exercises but it also causes many problems. To state it plainly the clone tool promotes laziness in many PS users as they look at it as a quick way to "fake" in elements or manipulate images. Now I don't work for Adobe but I think the intent of the clone or stamp tool was for retouching and fixing up little areas, not copying noticeable portions of your work. Lets look at a couple examples.

Some of you may be familiar with this image as it was the source of a major journalistic issue back in 2006 involving a Reuters photographer and the new agency itself. I have provided the original and the modified images for comparison. For now I am only going to focus on the PS workmanship itself. In the bottom image I have added highlights that show where the cloning tool was used and left obvious repetitions in the smoke.

Again we have another image that was the source of journalistic controversy. You can see in the highlighted portions that a missile was obviously added to this scenario. Much like the image before, smoke is completely organic and should not be repetitive.

Here we have a snip-it of part of a Google map where some trees have obviously copied from somewhere else and then poorly cloned. I wonder what Google Maps was covering up here? I sometimes wonder how many things and places in Google Maps is covered or altered for security, or to put it another way, secrecy.

I have to be honest I laughed out loud when I put the circle around the eye on this girls forehead because I know none of you need any help seeing the forgery here. This is a prime example of what the clone tool is not meant for. If I was given an assignment to add another eye to this girls forehead I would have attempted to use a combination of both eyes to make it look symmetrical. Here is a funny question for you. If we had a third eye on our foreheads would it have a tear duct and if it did, which side would it be on? Also, because this was done with the clone/stamp tool there is a bit of a halo around the third eye because it was cloned on the lighter side of her face and that light is conflicting with the shadow that starts on her forehead.

Like last week, I will ask the question does any of this matter? I will hold my position that it matters if we are being consciously deceptive. In some of the above images there was an attempt at being deceptive. There are techniques that could be used to create more convincing images but in saying that when we get caught does it mean we should be more ethical or become better liars? That is a heavy thought for a Monday morning but truth is truth seven days a week.

Here is a good example to close on that may be a little more relatable. If you are using the clone tool to fix up some grass in an photo for an ad your in a safe place. However if your photo is being used in an ad for some fertilizer and your trying to improve the look of the grass because the fertilizer didn't work very well on the test plot your getting into deception. So don't be lazy in your creativity or execution of visuals. Where there's a will, there's a way.