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.
Email newsletters confuse me. More specifically, the blind allegiance that many organizations show towards email newsletters as a primary means of communication is confounding.
Don't get me wrong, email newsletters can be an effective tool, but they have their place (strengths and weaknesses) and it's important to recognize that.
Today I read this article. It's truly worth your time to give it a read as it is six quick paragraphs that will have an important impact on your thinking around electronic marketing and communications.
The one quote in that article that really caught my attention was: “Email...is based on hope. Hope that the message gets through, hope that the recipient is there, hope that they open it and hope that they return the message.”
I love that quote. Email is a challenging medium. One with few guarantees, lots of competing 'noise' and little control over. So why would you opt to put all your eggs in that basket when other means are available that provide more immediate and more measurable feedback?
The last two lines in this article say it best:
“These findings also have significant implications for those businesses that rely on email marketing for some or all of their business. These companies should be evaluating to see if social media platforms are an effective method for distributing their message.”
I am thrilled to have received so much feedback from the readers last week for two reasons. It is nice to know that so many people were reading the MMM posts and enjoying them. At one point I was wondering if it was at all useful or falling to the wayside. Secondly, it is nice to know that so much of the Xpiritmental community is invested into the blog leveraging it as a valuable resource. So based on the comments I received last week court is now in recess. That's right, recess, not adjourned.
For the time being I am going to take a break from MMM and move onto more of a "How-To" style of post. I think MMM will resume some day and maybe I will break from the "How-To's" from time-to-time, but for now the majority have spoken and said that the “How-To's” would be very helpful.
Thank you to those that posted comments. This was a decision I wanted to make based on the readers needs. Throughout this new series I will take requests for posts if you want to know how something is done from a design standpoint. Next Monday tune in for AM Design 101.
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".
This week I am looking for some reader feedback. I would like to know if any of you out there have been finding the Monday Morning Misdemeanors useful or interesting. I have been writing these for over four months now and want to know if it is time to bang the gavel and move on.
So far I have written about a number of issues ranging across almost all facets of design. I am by no means out of ideas, but this blog is for you, the readers.
I have been thinking if MMM has run its course for the time being, I could change gears and start writing some "how to's" for custom template design in the AdvancedMinistry ("AM") 3.0 backend. There are a lot of creative ideas that can be leveraged to make interesting and different template designs that will make your site standout.
Oftentimes, when we design a template we are sort of restricted in what we can do because our sites need to work for anyone that might want to use it. These ideas don't just go away and I have been thinking that I could use Xpiritmental as a means of getting the word out. Our AM product is really flexible and when you put your mind to it there is quite a lot you can do with it from a design perspective.
So the question for the week is; does MMM keep going or do I step out of the court room and into the class room and start teaching design for the AM product? Let me know. I want your say. After all, I am writing for you.
For those of you who use our Twitter integration component on AdvancedMinistry or Electricurrent, you may have noticed a message that comes up every once in awhile that says "Twitter service unavailable" The reason for this is because the Twitter services are overloaded. They are working to fix the problem as fast as possible. Here's what Mashable.com (a social media news site) has to say:
"Twitter's been having a rough month keeping the service stable, and the micro-blogging service is willing to admit it.
For the last few weeks, Twitter has been experiencing constant errors, fail whales and downtime, culminating in yesterday's extended downtime and today's high error rate.
In a short blog post, Twitter's Sean Garrett didn't mince words: 'From a site stability and service outage perspective, it's been Twitter's worst month since last October.'"
To read the full article on Mashable.com, click here. We will continue to monitor the situation closely.
This week I am going to revolutionize the way you look at making selections in Adobe Photoshop. For a long time early on in my career the only way I ever selected objects in Photoshop ("PS") was by using the pen tool and close cropping the subject matter that I wanted to isolate. That was partly due to the options that PS offered way back when, but it was also due to the fact that I didn't try to learn anything new. As I grew as a designer I picked up on some things that made my life a lot easier. Today I am going to pass them onto you.
Pen Tool/Paths - The paths panel is usually found as a tab on the layers palette. If its not there you can go under the window menu and click "Paths" to open the menu. You will then have to use the menu button in the top-right corner of the path palette to make a new path. Once this is done you can take the pen tool and begin tracing what you want to isolate from your image.
Once your path is complete you go back to the same menu that you used to create your path and select "Make Selection". Then you can do whatever you need from there with the selected area.
Lasso - This tool is found on the main tool bar. With the lasso there are three versions available that all have their own benefit. There is the regular lasso tool that is a free-flowing selection tool. There is the polygon lasso tool which is a point and click tool meaning you can click and move to another point then click again to set your next point. Lastly there is the magnet lasso tool which reads the pixels of an image and sets a path along a line of pixels that have similar color values.
This tool works a lot like the pen tool but it isn't saving your progress as you go. What is painful about the lasso tool is that if you make a mistake it is not easy to go back and make changes. A lot of the time you are stuck with staring over. I recommend this tool for making small or quick and uncomplicated selections.
Wand - The wand is found on the main tool bar in Photoshop and is a quick and handy way of selecting a chunk of pixels with similar colours. The magic wand offers the ability to set the tolerance of how sensitive or picky it will be while making selections. In a bar under the menu across the top of the screen there is a box which you can enter a number to set the tolerance. You enter a value between 0 and 255. In this range 0 = very picky and 255 = select everything.
Color Range - For me color range is my favorite and most preferred method for selections. It operates with the same principles of the wand but is more sophisticated. This tool is located under the "Select" option on the main menu bar.
What is great about this tool is that it offers a preview of what your results are going to be before you commit to a selection. You can also refine your selection on the fly by holding shift on Mac or PC, then clicking on the image with the eye dropper to add to the selection, or by pressing the option key on Mac or alt on a PC then clicking on the image with the eye dropper to subtract from a selection. When you are finished you click "OK" on the color range box and your selection is made.
Background Eraser - This is a quick and handy tool to use if you have an object that needs to be selected off of a background that is mainly made up of a solid color. It can be found under the eraser tool on the main tool bar. You simply set your brush size and start erasing the unwanted portion of your image. If the tolerance is set right, you should get a result of the background being erased and the desired pixels remaining unaffected.
Extraction - This is a great tool and rather sophisticated and would require me to write a whole lot more than I believe you are willing to read. So if you want to know more about this click here. This method is great to use for subject matter that have intricate parts, particularly hair. The extract tool is a plugin that needs to be downloaded from Adobe. If you are on a PC click here and if you are on a Mac click here.
While all of these methods are great, they take practice and experience to gain a better understanding of their strengths and weaknesses. Once these are learned you can make better judgements of when and where to use them and how they can work together to make good selections. One of the biggest realizations I ever made with selections is that sometimes its easier to select the opposite of what your actually wanting to select. Meaning if you are trying to select a tree on a sky background instead of painstakingly selecting the tree it is easier using the above tools to select the sky. Then delete the sky and you are left with the tree you wanted. All these tools will help you avoid having ragged cutout shapes or being left with ghosting around objects. A lot of these will also save you loads of time.
As always if you have any questions, post a comment.
I was reading through Marketing Magazine and came across an article entitled: "Peer Trust Plunges". The subtitle read: "Consumers trust friends less, CEO's more, according to latest Edelman study."
The article goes on to outline that: "the number of people who view their friends and peers as credible sources of information about a company dropped by almost half, from 45% to 25%, since 2008..."
This is a bit of validation for me because although I'm a fan of social media and hold high the banner of authenticity and accessibility, I've always struggled with passionate people who say that social networking and social media are in fact, the future of all organizations and those that don't get on board, will fail.
I think that's an extreme position and it's a wonderful play on the human tendency to allow the pendulum to swing too far one way or the other. Lots of people have made loads of cash preaching the death of old marketing and the extreme perspective that social media is THE future. I'm not convinced it is. It's definitely a part of our future, arguably a big part, and it will evolve as this study shows it already has, but it's not the silver bullet for marketing.
So for me, this is a lesson in being careful to not allow the pendulum to swing too far to the left or the right. At times, there's definitely opportunities to foray into the extreme edges of our reach and explore what's out there, but let's be passionate about maintaining an unbiased and evaluative perspective, instead of just doing what the next guy is or what the big marketing guru is saying to do.
To my mind, that's more of a silver bullet than social media will ever be.
The title of this blog post is actually a quote from a presentation by Steve Uzzell.
Steve is a professional photographer and has shot for many big name corporations, including having done editorial for National Geographic, Time and Newsweek...so here's a guy that knows what he's doing with a camera and specializes in capturing moments of magic in an image.
Have you ever looked through a National Geographic and thought to yourself: How are these photographers always in the right place at the right time to get shots like this?
Let me tell you that it isn't luck...it's preparation. Or better yet, let Steve himself be the example.
Take Steve's shot above of a Maryland bridge. He scouted this location for a few days searching for the right spot to get a good angle on the bridge. Then he went home and in the subsequent days, called the national weather service and other resources to learn about and determine the exact moment in the coming weeks/months that he would need to be in his location of choice in order to capture the shot he had envisioned...as seen above.
And then the magic happened. In all of his research and planning, Steve could have never planned and known that at that moment, two trucks would lumber across the bridge and find themselves both back-dropped by the burning sunset in the background.
Steve's preparation led to magic.
It strikes me that so many people today tend to believe that magic just 'happens'. You know what I mean...that moment of brilliance where someone comes up with an amazing idea, a worship service goes incredibly well or a video goes viral. And while some of those things do just somehow happen, more often than not, those magic moments we encounter come as a result of a lot of groundwork laid prior to the event.
And since we can't count on the magic to happen, it just makes sense to do the preparation. The happy side-effect is that you'll find yourself encountering the magic more often when you do.
I am going to make this post rather simple because the philosophies of design are hard to express verbally and nearly impossible to do in writing. In my more than ten years of designing I have also found that tastes are many and varied. Some people see what they see as good and others see as bad and no one can convince them otherwise. As stated earlier I have been doing this for a long time so I think that gives me some authority to hand out two cents and tell you they can be taken to the bank. So for your consideration, here is a list of things that should never be done when creating a logo.
Never design your logo in Adobe Photoshop. You will be tempted to add too much detail or special effects that don't belong on a logo.
Never design a logo in Microsoft Word.
Drop shadows, bevels, glows and other special effects should not be used. They make your logo too complicated. This hinders reproduction, reducibility and usability.
Never distort typography. (as per last weeks post)
Don't use more than two different typefaces in a logo.
Avoid swooshes and other design items that are trendy.
Never use a stock logo or clip art.
Never steal.
Never commit to a logo before getting feedback from others.
Take care when making symbols into letters.
Now these are ten rules that you could follow but I feel like there is so much more that could be covered. I could follow these ten rules and still make something that looks terrible. So consider these as a place to start designing a logo. Look around for yourself and get a feel for the differences between good logos and bad logos.
A place that I frequent for inspiration or just to get my head into the right space for logo design is LogoPond. There is nothing on that site in the main showcase that is bad, so feel free to get so more education there.
Lastly, I have shared this before but it is so good I am going to share it again. A famous designer by the name of Paul Rand wrote a good piece on logo design. It changed my mind and philosophy on logo design forever.
Feel free to question me on any of the above rules, I'd love to discuss them more with you. If you have a logo you would like me to comment on, I would be happy to help out.
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".
If you're on Facebook, we invite you to become a fan of the new AdvancedMinistry Facebook page. The new page replaces the old (rarely advertised) "AdvancedMinistry 2.0" Facebook site which has now been removed.
By becoming a fan of AdvancedMinistry on Facebook, you'll have access to all of our blog feeds, sample sites, and new feature announcements. Additionally, from time to time AdvancedMinistry will be giving Facebook fans special previews on the latest features coming down the pipe.
To become a fan of the new AdvancedMinistry Facebook page, go here and then click on the Like button.
Monday Morning Misdemeanors is a series of weekly posts written by Graphic Designer, Derek Gyssels. In this series, Derek hones in on a number of common problems that crop up in graphic designs and then gives you the tools to avoid them which will give your designs a professional polish. This week's feature is actually "TAM" because we are posting it on a Tuesday Afternoon (as yesterday this feature got trumped in favor of announcing our corporate 10-year anniversary).
This week's post is going to act as a bridge between last week's and next week's.
On one side of the bridge we have the topic of typography (Do's & Don'ts) and on the other side we have logo design. I consider this post to be a bridge because last week I wrote about bad practices in typography but only brushed on topic of font distorting and next week's post is going to be about bad practices in logo design. Using a distorted font in a logo is about the worst thing a designer can do. It is so bad that you could almost say that any person willing to commit such a heinous act is not a professional designer at all.
Before I can make a solid case for why font distorting is a graphic crime, I need to build a foundation of understanding, so consider the following. Typography is both alphabet and font. Or to say it another way, it is both science and art.
On the science side of things we have 26 letter forms that make up the English alphabet. They are all unique and identifiable from each other but also work together in groups to form words and sentences that translate into communication. Of course this has been a process over the course of history but here we are today with a solid group of letter forms that have been engineered to be easily recognizable and readable, that is to anyone who has grown up learning English as a language.
On the art side of things these 26 letter forms are carefully crafted into fonts to be aesthetically pleasing to the eye and enhance readability. Throughout history, many designers have attempted to design the alphabet into different font styles to convey different feelings and moods with varying degrees of success.
With both of those philosophies combined we can assert that typography is and should be well engineered letter forms that are easily recognizable, both easy to read and aesthetically pleasing to the viewer.
With this understanding when you distort a font for whatever reason you are taking easily recognizable letter forms that are easy to read and pleasing to the eye and making them less recognizable, less easy to read and unpleasing to the eye. This in turn makes a piece of visual design repulsive to the eye and therefore unattractive to the audience you're working very hard to appeal to. Does that sound like something you want to do? I don't think so.
While font distorting is undesirable everywhere, it is especially problematic in logo design. Your logo is the representative of your company. Your logo is often everywhere that you aren't. In many cases your logo leaves the first impression and many impressions after that. There is never a reason to distort a font because distorting a font basically equates to being careless and negligent. There are literally thousands upon thousands of fonts to be chosen from. Many of these fonts are parts of families that offer every possible variation you could want whether bold, thin, condensed, expanded, italics, all caps, the list goes on. Choose one that meets your needs and doesn't need to be altered by either adding an outline to make it bold, or skewing to make it italics or stretching and squishing to fit.
It can be time consuming looking for the right type face and costly to purchase the right font but it is worth it in the end. Do you think Nike spends millions on its identity just because they like to spend the money? No, they recognize the value because people gravitate to well-designed and purposeful communication. Now I am not saying you need to spend millions, but maybe $200-$500 dollars on some good typography is a wise long-term investment. I'll close by showing some examples.
All these examples feature the Helvetica font family. Here we see the difference between a condensed version and one that was squished.
Extended versus stretched.
Bold versus outlined.
Italics versus skewed.
Does this car look as sporty squished?
Is Mona still compelling stretched out?
The last two images are to make the point that we don't really consider distorting other visuals because it makes them look wrong. The same applies to type. So stop distorting fonts. You don't stretch, squish and distort anything else in design. It is an unnecessary, bad and unprofessional practice. There are always other options.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
Email newsletters confuse me. More specifically, the blind allegiance that many organizations show towards email newsletters as a primary means of communication is confounding.
For those of you who use our Twitter integration component on AdvancedMinistry or Electricurrent, you may have noticed a message that comes up every once in awhile that says "Twitter service unavailable" The reason for this is because the Twitter services are overloaded. They are working to fix the problem as fast as possible. Here's what 
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