For anyone that's ever said to someone, “Your camera takes really nice pictures”, this is a MUST read this article by Erin Farrell. I'll quote the first few paragraphs and then you can read the rest of it on her website (along with a fantastic case study). Great job, Erin!
“Imagine that you’re baking dessert for a party. It’s your special recipe: the one everyone asks for. You make it from scratch, of course, never looking at the recipe that you committed to memory so long ago. Sugar, beaten eggs, sift in the flour… you’re crafting something delicious from basic elements. Now you’re at the party and everyone is gushing about your dessert. The flavor! The texture! But most of all you’re being asked, 'What kind of oven do you have? It makes great cakes!'
That’s pretty much how a photographer feels when people look at their photos and say, 'Your camera takes great pictures.'
Of course it’s not the camera that takes great photos, any more than it’s the oven that makes a great dessert. Ovens and cameras are just tools that make our jobs easier. Yes, better equipment does make a difference. I wouldn’t spend thousands of dollars on cameras and lenses if it didn’t. However, you must understand the camera to take advantage of all it can offer. Just because you’re using a professional camera does not mean you are producing professional images.”
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 Frontiers, a ministry focused on sharing the love of Jesus within the Muslim community. We were very blessed to have the opportunity to work with Frontiers on all aspects of their brand including communications strategy, logo, website, etc.
You can read more about Frontiers by visiting their website at www.frontiersusa.org.
This week, we're going to give Derek a little bit of a breather. The man has been a writing machine over the last number of months documenting Monday Morning Misdemeanors and more recently, a column on “How To's”. So today, as an honorary guest to the How To columns, I am going to speak on ways to simplify your home page.
One of the great things about AdvancedMinistry is that you can feature any component you want on your home page. You can change the number of columns on the fly, reposition a module, and so on.
But just because you can do something, doesn't mean that you always should... for example when your home page becomes convoluted with too many items, it may be time to simplify.
So without further ado, let me show you two ways that you can bring simplification to your home page.
OPTION #1 - “3.0 Simplified home page”
Believe it or not, we've actually built a feature right into AdvancedMinistry that allows you to remove all of the columns from your home page and simplify it with a banner and navigation. To simplify your home page using this method:
1. Login to AdvancedMinistry and click on “Choose My Template” (right hand side).
2. If you already have an AM 3.0 template, click on EDIT beside the template that you want to simplify. Then proceed to Step 3. If you don't have an AM 3.0 template yet, select an AM 3.0 template and click on “Make This My Template”. Then, click on EDIT beside your new template.
3. Click on the “Layout” tab.
4. Under HOME PAGE VIEW, choose “Hide All Columns (Simple Home Page)” from the “Show/Hide Columns” menu.
5. Click on “Save” and then the “Home” button (in the top right).
6. Click on “View My Website” (right hand side) to preview it!
OPTION #2 - “Simplified Image Features”
Many organizations that we've featured on AdvancedMinistry spend the time executing simple image features. Here are some examples:
Believe it or not this process is not complicated, providing that you have a moderate level of graphic design experience. To use this process, follow the steps, below. Note that there are many ways to accomplish what I'm about to show you... this is merely one of them.
1. Login to AdvancedMinistry and click on “Choose My Template” (right hand side).
2. If you already have an AM 3.0 template, click on EDIT beside the template that you want to simplify. Then proceed to Step 3. If you don't have an AM 3.0 template yet, select an AM 3.0 template (on the left) and click on “Make This My Template”. Then, click on EDIT beside your new template.
3. Click on the “Navigation” tab.
4. Change “Enable Footer Menu” to “No” and click on “Save”.
5. Click on the “Layout” tab.
6. Scroll down and write down (on a piece of paper, or wherever) the Individual Component Padding for “Left” and “Right”. (This is the padding contained inside of each column.)
7. Scroll back up and click on the link that says, “Click Here To Edit the Width of Each Column”.
8. Write down the width of each column. In the case of the screen capture demo (below), it's 289, 289 and 290. You will not want your images to be wider than the width of each column.
9. In Adobe Photoshop (or another graphic editing program), create your 3 feature images. (You could also do 4 images if you had 4 columns, or 5 images if you had 5 columns, etc.). In my case, I'm going to create 3 images, all 240 pixels wide by 100 pixels high. The reason that I am only making it 240 is because I want to keep each image under 245 pixels wide. (289 – 22 – 22) (Further explanation: 289: column width MINUS 22: padding left MINUS 22: padding right EQUALS 245.)
10. Back in the Admin, click on File Manager (right hand side) and upload the 3 files you've created.
11. Click on the Home button (in the top right) to go back to your main Content Management Screen.
12. You are now going to create 3 feature areas. To do so, repeat Steps 13 through 18 three times (since we have 3 columns)
13. Click on “Add Main Category”.
14. Do NOT give it a name.
15. Under the Page Options menu, select “Disable Page in Navigation Only”.
16. Click on the “Insert/Edit Image” icon and browse for the your feature image.
17. If you want to link the feature to somewhere else on your site, you can click on the LINK tab (under Image Properties).
18. Click “OK” and then “Add Content”. (Go back to Step 11 for any remaining feature images.)
19. You should now have something that looks like this.
Click on “Manage My Home Page Features” (located near the top of the page).
20. Drag anything in Column 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 into the “Not Featured” column.
21. Take the 3 “Untitled” items that you've just created and drag them into Column 1, 2 and 3 (so that you have one in each area).
22. Click on “Save Changes” and then the “Home” button (in the top right).
23. Click on “View My Website” (right hand side) to preview it!
We are pleased to announce Xpiritmental wallpaper #67 entitled, I Shall Look, inspired by Psalm 27:13.
Download the new wallpaper by selecting your preferred screen resolution (below) or visit the Xpiritmental Archives for more wallpapers. Have a great weekend!
A few weekends ago, our family got together for a family reunion (actually, my wife's family). Her mother, who has passed away, is from a family of 12 brothers and 1 sister. As we sat down and watched an actual slide show with a projector, we laughed and many stories were told including how they managed to not only survive, but flourish and set up a legacy which will last for a long, long time.
They talked about the division of tasks. Half of them were responsible for inside tasks while the other half were responsible for outside tasks. Although the boys who were assigned inside tasks where not necessarily overjoyed with the assignment of work normally performed by women in those days, their contribution not only helped the family be successful, but taught them great lessons and skills they used in their work careers and family raising careers. (all very successful)
So what am I trying to say and what would I like to discuss with you?
Lets discuss our God given abilities (roles) and how they can help not only our communities, churches and families, but also the personal joy we will experience when doing what we were created to do.
So often we want what other people have (talent and things) but don't realize that without our specific talents, the communities we are involved in are less than they could be.
Experience family, work, church, community to their fullest. Leave a legacy of living life like God intended. Be the best you that you can possibly be.
P.S. I'm hoping you can see how this applies to communicating the amazing message of Jesus Christ.
We are pleased to announce a new AdvancedMinistry template entitled "School Is In". The template was designed in response to a great deal of feedback that we've received asking for more school-based designs. 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 we're doing something a little different. Instead of showing you sites from AdvancedMinistry and Electricurrent, we'd like to show you what some of our BarkBuilder clients are doing. (BarkBuilder is the business version of AdvancedMinistry.)
I had a great and unexpected conversation last week with Andrew from which the topic of this post was birthed. We both felt like it could make a great Monday morning post. For some of you this is going to be a great “ah-ha” moment. For others it might drum up painful memories. It is my hope that this will help all of you greatly going forward. Consider the following...
The Mechanic Your car is making a funny noise or running rough. Maybe it won't start at all or smoke was pouring out while you were on the highway. In any event you find yourself realizing you need to go to an auto shop to get the help of a professional mechanic. You speak with the mechanic and describe what you were experiencing with your vehicle. Maybe you give him a little history of the last few months or year of your driving habits and observations of your car. After all no one knows your car better than you. The mechanic then takes all those things into consideration and takes a thorough look at your vehicle. The next day you go back and find out everything that is wrong with your car and you are given a quote. You agree to the quote and he commences working on your car.
However you don't go home, you decide to hang around and watch him work. You mill about the garage and observe him as he works. Every once in a while you ask him if he should be using the tool that he chose or you ask if he should be using the parts he is and suggest other parts instead. He explains why you shouldn't go down that road but you push back and suggest he use a different part. He is uncomfortable with your suggestions and would prefer that you trust his knowledge and years of experience so that you can leave with a car in good working order. After you call a few friends and remember what you saw on a “do it yourself” show one Saturday morning 8 months ago you have him go ahead with what you want. He obliges because you are his client and paying for the service despite his advice and warning you otherwise.
You pay and leave. You drive home and your ride is smooth. You car feels new again and you feel great because you had a hand in fixing your car. Then a month later something happens. It starts to run rough again. You're confused, it was just fixed. Each day it gets worse and your left with a problem that is worse than the one your started with. Then you remember the mechanic you hired and the money you spent. You're angry because he didn't fix it properly. Well we both know your not going back there, he didn't do his job right!
The Designer Your brand isn't performing the way you would like it to. Maybe your not getting responses to direct mail campaigns, your site isn't getting hits or maybe people just plain don't understand what you are all about. In any event you find yourself realizing you need the help of a professional designer. You speak with a designer and describe what you have been experiencing with your brand. Maybe you give a little history of the last few months or year of what you have been trying to do and the observations you have made of your audience. After all no one knows your ministry better than you. The designer then takes all those things into consideration and takes a thorough look at your brand. The next day you meet again and find out everything that is wrong with your brand and are given a quote for the work that will be required to fix the situation.
So the designer goes to work and sends you a mock up of the new initiative that is going to change everything for you. You receive the email and give it a look. You like it but want to see something else because it wasn't quite on the mark. Fair enough, the designer obliges your request. You see the second design and make a list of requests and changes to the color, photography, layout or messaging. He explains why you shouldn't go down that road but you push back and press him to use your suggestions. He is uncomfortable with your suggestions and would prefer that you trust his expertise and years of experience so that you can end up with a brand in good working order. After you show the design to a few friends and remember that one article you read about good design one some website a few months ago you have him go ahead with what you want. He obliges because you are his client and paying for the service despite his advice and warning you otherwise.
You pay and your design is complete. You unleash your new campaign, site or brochure and love it. You feel great because you had a hand in fixing your brand. Then a month later something happens. You're not seeing the numbers you wanted coming in. The hits on the site are still low and people still don't get what you're about. You're confused, it was just fixed. Each day it gets worse and you're left with a problem that is worse than the one you started with. Then you remember the designer you hired and the money you spent. You're angry because he didn't do his job right. Well we both know you're not hiring him again, he didn't do his job right!
The Point I trust that it's clear in the first story above that the fault wasn't really that of the mechanic. In fact, I'd venture to guess that most people reading this would read that and think: “how ridiculous”. The question is then, why does that attitude make sense in a design context?
We love serving our clients. Everyone that comes on board is special to us and we want nothing but the best for them. However there are times when we run into a situation like the ones described above. There have been times when projects have been dragged out and ultimately been less successful or even failed because of someone being unwilling to take our advice. The very advice they hired us and are paying us for.
There are probably a few of you out there that are reading this and can identify with the above parable. Some of you have been through many designers or worked with an agency or two and had this (bad) experience.
We felt it was important to lay this out for you so that you can get the most out of the designer/agency you are working with and the dollars you are spending. After all we have all heard that time is money. If you are crippling an initiative you are undertaking right now, not only are you wasting your current time and money, but also the time and money that will be required to recover from it and that's if it is even possible to do so.
So remember this going forward. Your input is valuable and paramount to the success of your ministry. When it comes to the actual execution or work, let the designer/mechanic do their job.
As of today, any video files displayed in your media player will show an automatically generated preview image before the video is clicked on. This replaces the old method of displaying a generic AdvancedMinistry graphic.
Note: When a video is uploaded and cataloged in the system, please allow 5-10 minutes for the image to be generated.
In these incredibly hectic and fast-paced times, it's clear to me that it has, and is, becoming more and more difficult to manage the tasks that a person has to do in a day. Ironically, I also see a real aversion in people to do the simple things that will help them manage their task lists. For instance, something as ridiculously simple as writing your tasks down and assigning due dates to them.
That in and of itself is a hurdle to overcome. But when you get to the point where you've got that mastered, the other thing to consider is a new concept that I'd never considered before but heard from popular author Jim Collins. The concept is to create a to-do list and then in concert with that, generate a stop-do list. Brilliant!
Too many of us are doing too many things and as a result, most of us aren't doing anything as well as we could if we were to bear down, simplify and get the job done right. We have been and continue to foster a culture of “I can do that!”, which is a wonderfully positive attitude and a absolutely impossible promise to fulfill as often as we say it.
How does this relate to communications? Simply put, if you're too busy to do what's on your plate, things suffer and everything you do contributes to the brand of your organization. If you are too busy to run your ministry well, volunteers will suffer. If you are too busy to connect with your clients on a regular basis and be open to new work, customer relationships will break down. If you are too busy to stop and think strategically about how your organization communicates, it either won't communicate anything or it will communicate the wrong thing.
Being too busy has massive implications on your brand and the quality of what it is that you are called to do in your day-to-day work.
Establish a to-do list and then figure out which of those items needs to be on your stop-do list. Then get on with doing everything that's on your plate with a true commitment to quality and excellence.
Most of the creative things that can be done with the AdvancedMinistry (“AM”) platform will stem from how you use background images. So this week I am going to share another secret of how to creatively use a background image that will change the look-and-feel of your navigation.
Start by beginning to set up your new website in AdvancedMinistry
Figure out what your main navigation items are going to be by setting up your site architecture in the AdvancedMinistry administration panel.
Roughly set up your site on the platform. The main concern here is determining the order of your title header, banner and navigation and approximately the height/location of the banner.
Once you have all of your info filled in, preview your site.
Take a screen grab or caption of what you have previewed.
Take your screen grab/caption into Photoshop and drop it into the bottom layer of your working design file. (Make sure your screen grab is centred to your art board so that when you save out your background and select it to be centred in the browser everything will line up. Also when using this technique make sure when you set up your background set the Scroll with Page options to “Don't scroll with page”)
What you have now is a working blueprint of your site and you can design tabs or buttons for your navigation right into your background image knowing where the text for those buttons will be located on the screen. (keep in mind that when you design for this platform, about 80% of the design hangs on what you do with the background because everything else is handled by the platform for you, unless you get into doing some custom html for your site.)
Make your design (tab or buttons) however you want it to look and then save out your background making sure that none of the type is showing because once it is in your site the actual text that you've added in the administration panel will populate that area.
Upload your background through the file manager and link to it in the background tab of the design area of AM.
Preview your site
Make adjustments as necessary.
One thing that you need to consider when doing this with your site is whether or not you regularly change your main level navigation. If you do change it often, this approach is something you may want to avoid because you would need to be constantly updating your background design to coincide with the the new navigation options.
Just do a little planning ahead and this technique could suit your site well and make it stand apart from a lot of other sites in the AM arena.
Marketing often gets a bad wrap. People hear the word and they think of evil corporate entities that manipulate people into buying products and services they don't need. To be fair, there are those organizations and marketing initiatives out there. But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Marketing can be used for positive purposes as well. See above.
So this is a bit of a tough post to write for a few reasons. First, it's going to say some tough stuff about churches and ministries and second, it's going to challenge an approach to design, development and maintenance of ministry websites that seems right and natural, but frequently ends in disaster.
That being the case, I want to preface this post by saying two things:
What I'm about to share comes from experience. It comes from years of seeing churches and ministries try to approach the design, development and maintenance of their site in a risky way.
What I'm about to share comes solely from a heart of helping the readers of this blog avoid a common pitfall. If the result of this is that a few more people sign up for AdvancedMinistry or call us for a custom website, obviously, that's great. But I want it to be clear that this post, is about sharing experience that can keep you all from a lot of struggles with your site. I don't want someone perceiving this as a sales tactic and as a result shrugging it off as useless information.
Having laid that groundwork, the issue I want to tackle is of churches and ministries that opt to use volunteers from within their church to design, develop and maintain their website.
In short, my recommendation is this: tread carefully.
Don't get me wrong, I know that it's a tempting option. A well-intentioned and willing volunteer with experience in this area can seem like a gift from heaven when you weigh that against the cost of working with an outside firm.
However, what I've come to see in my years of managing accounts for both ministry-based and for-profit organizations as it pertains to the idea of ministries using volunteers is that in the long-run, it really isn't worth the up-front savings. Here's why things often break down:
Churches and ministries are difficult to manage. I can imagine that some of you out there are nodding your heads in acknowledgement while others likely have no idea why I would say that. So let me qualify.
As I compare my experience of managing corporate clients to churches and ministries, it's clear that in general, most ministries don't understand what it takes organizationally to get a website off the ground. This is part of the reason that we spend so much time on this blog talking about good decision-making.
Ministries often fall into the trap of either getting too many people involved in decisions, or having one person in leadership with a strong personality that drives the whole process. There's often no happy medium. Managing this dynamic takes experience, time, effort and patience and is something that most volunteers heading into a website project have no idea to look for. As a result, they soon find themselves in an unhappy place; wishing they never helped. This lack of drive leads to a reduced commitment to the project.
Churches and ministries are notoriously bad at paying their bills. I've blogged here about this in the past, but in my years of managing both ministries and for-profit clients, it has become clear that corporate clients pay their bills most often on time, without complaint. This is not the case with ministries. Of course, given the nature of how ministries run and are financed, there needs to be some allowance for this to occur.
However, most often, it's a situation of lack of organization or good money management that leads to these missed payments. This adds an incredible amount of stress to a relationship with someone from within your ministry if you owe them money for expenditures that they have taken on personally but aren't reimbursed for. Again, this only and often leads to a sour relationship which doesn't incentivize anyone to complete the project.
Churches and ministries often come across like the volunteer owes them something because the work of the ministry is so important and commissioned by God. This can lead to abuse of that person's time and lack of appreciation for their efforts. Whether it's intentional or not, this attitude stresses the relationship and will almost always cause things to end badly.
On the flip side:
Volunteers most often don't bring the breadth of experience to the table that is required to see the project succeed. Just because someone is good at design or programming doesn't make them qualified to manage a web project. Different people are gifted in different areas, this is why we have distinct management, design and development teams who work together to generate solutions but each department focusses on a specific set of tasks that they are experienced and gifted at.
A volunteer can get tired, frustrated, busy or even lazy! This is a real challenge because there really is no drive to complete the project. With an established company, a ministry would establish a legally binding contract for the work to be completed in a reasonable amount of time. This most often doesn't exist in a volunteer situation as the work is typically undertaken in good faith and it often leads to a stress in the relationship.
Volunteers can move on. So, your volunteer has taken the site through the planning and design phase and just started into their real forte, development, when they get a job offer from another area of the country and move away. This happens all the time and the ministry is left high-and-dry missing the one person in the process that knew all the parts and plans for the site.
So there's a breakdown of just a few of the reasons why using a volunteer from within your church or ministry can be a bad call. Of course, that statement is a blanket statement and I'm sure that there are some of you out there who could outline a great volunteer experience. However, those positive experiences are clearly the exception to the rule, not the standard.
In the worst-case scenarios, we've seen whole websites get to near completion and have to be abandoned and the process reinitiated from scratch...translating to significant unexpected expenditures.
We've also seen website domains expire and websites go down because the volunteer registered the domain in their own name and will no longer respond to emails, even though the domain has expired.
For all these reasons, think seriously the next time you look to a volunteer in your church or ministry to help you along with your web project (or any communications effort for that matter). It's not to say that every experience with a professional firm will go smoothly either. But this world of communications, with it's subjectivity in design and challenges presented by development, has enough pitfalls built in, using an expert to navigate through it with you can help to mitigate against those pitfalls.
Today I want to hone in on the concept of 'space'.
And no, by 'space' I'm not referring to, “the final frontier”. Rather, I'm talking about Negative Space – the area around and between the subject(s) of an image.
To borrow from the Wikipedia definition of Negative Space:
The use of equal negative space, as a balance to positive space, in a composition is considered by many as good design. This basic and often overlooked principle of design gives the eye a "place to rest," increasing the appeal of a composition through subtle means. The term is also used by musicians to indicate silence within a piece.
Negative space is a critically important element of successful communications because it provides a helpful context and setup to the subject you are trying to communicate. In fact, it is important enough that I would go so far as to say that communications efforts based in mediums like graphic arts and speech-giving are failures unless they take negative space into consideration.
Give your design room to breathe. Give your audience time and space to allow your last sentence to sink in. Don't ambush and annoy your mailing lists with e-newsletter after e-newsletter.
Leave space for comprehension. Leave space for retention. Leave space for successful communications.
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 Mission Peru -- a missions trip that is happening right now in Trujillo, Peru! Every day (almost hourly), the team of 72 people (mostly youth) post videos, photos, blogs and Twitter updates to the website. The team also includes two members of our staff: Eric Provost and Ray Majoran.
I would like to start this week by talking about one element that really can make all the difference for your site, which is the background. If you use the background creatively you can create something really unique.
There are two sites I have designed that have backgrounds that I think are particularly good examples for this “How To”. The first is the West London Alliance Youth site and the second is a nature-themed template entitled, Beautiful Nature.
What makes them good examples is the fact that I was able to create backgrounds that feel large but really are small/medium sized repeating backgrounds. You may have seen in the AM backend that we recommend you keep file sizes below 100kb. Using a repeating background is a great way to have a site that feels very full and designed and stays under that recommended size. I will admit that at times I cheat on this size by going over and so can you, just consider where you are and what kind of internet service is available to your audience. If you are a small rural church you need to keep your site size down for those on lower bandwidth. If you're in a city you can loosen the reigns on that standard because typically, your audience will have high-speed connections.
The West London Alliance Youth site background image is only 66kb, while the Beautiful Nature background is 188kb. Why such a big file size difference for two graphics that aren't that different in height and width? The first background doesn't contain many colours and variations - it is mainly black and grey whereas the second background has many variations in colour meaning the file has to store more information than the other.
Now I will run you through the steps that I would take to create one of these backgrounds.
Create a new Adobe Photoshop document that is 1920 pixels wide by whatever height you want. The width 1920 is based on the largest screen resolution for common wide screen monitors. A pet peeve of mine is seeing sites with a large background that doesn't go edge to edge on a wide screen monitor. Designing at 1920 wide will ensure your site looks complete and full.
Next I start putting guides on my page that will help me see the width of site proper (the actual real estate of the screen that will be devoted to the site content and functions. Let's say this site will be 900 pixels wide. First I place a vertical guide at the centre of my document then I will put a guide 450 pixels away from centre on both sides which defines a space of 900 pixels. Then I always put a horizontal guide at about 560 pixels from the top of the page which helps me remember where the viewable area is for the user on the “first fold” of the site (the area of the site that is immediately viewable for the user without scrolling).
Beyond this, your design is up to you. However, let's look a little more closely at the Beautiful Nature example I provided. What makes this background special is how I created the illusion of columns by repeating the background vertically.
The paper edges, texture, map and wood were all separate items that I “comped” together in Photoshop.
Depending on the complexity of what your are trying to create, it can be a real labour of love. The nature background was pretty time consuming trying to make it seamless and feel like it isn't repeating at all. I wanted the paper rip to feel real and that wouldn't have been accomplished if I had just carelessly mirrored one side to the other or taken a short rip and repeated it many times. The key to this one was to make it long enough that the eye doesn't really catch the repeat at all. So I made the rip unbalanced and somewhat unpredictable despite the fact that it is indeed repeating.
When I think my graphic is done I save out my JPG for the web and I upload it to the file manager and test it in the CMS and preview it on the web to see if I like what I have. If not I make adjustments and repeat the process of testing.
Things for you to take away:
Good backgrounds aren't obviously repeating. If they are, they will be distracting.
Use the repeating options creatively. You can repeat something vertically, horizontally or both.
Backgrounds can be used to create column designs.
You can forgive yourself for cheating on file size if your audience can handle the download time. (We're talking 2-3 seconds difference here)
Here is a sample of what I consider to be a bad repeating graphic. It's supposed to be knots in wood but it almost doesn't even look like that anymore because of the frequency. I think that is the essence of the rule that I am communicating. You can have a background made up of repeating geometrical shapes but when you get into textures of photographic objects you need to take care. The eye will always pick up on what is unnatural and focus on it. So if there is a large, repeating, unnatural background framing your site, you're not starting off on a good foot.
Anyone who knows me knows that I frequently refer to myself as being Dutch. I'm also a fan of soccer and so this World Cup has been a good one for me thus far and I've made a habit of flying my Dutch flags from my car on game days.
But the truth is, although I am extremely proud of my Dutch heritage and will continue to be despite what happens on the pitch tomorrow versus Brazil, as I sit here at my desk on Canada Day drinking...yes...a Tim Horton's coffee, I think of the country I live in today.
A country that my parents immigrated to and formed a new life in; a country of peace; a country of opportunity; a country formed from a beautiful tapestry of varied cultures where many flags can be flown during the World Cup; a country that is so very blessed...and I'm nothing but thankful.
May God indeed, truly keep our land glorious and free.
Xpiritmental is a resource. It's a place to learn and to share thoughts on marketing, ministry, design, service, the Web, culture and more. We'll start the conversation, but we're looking forward to hearing what you've got to say.
For anyone that's ever said to someone, “Your camera takes really nice pictures”, this is a MUST read this article by Erin Farrell. I'll quote the first few paragraphs and then you can read the rest of it on her website (along with a fantastic case study). Great job, Erin!
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Anyone who knows me knows that I frequently refer to myself as being Dutch. I'm also a fan of soccer and so this World Cup has been a good one for me thus far and I've made a habit of flying my Dutch flags from my car on game days.
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