Dialogue + Time = Success
One of the many things that I love about my job is the opportunity to work with the different departments at the church. Student ministries is something that is close to my heart and I try to help out as much as I can in helping them visually communicate to their specific audiences.
The project above is a mail-out piece I did for our high school ministry. The computer time it took to finish this project was longer then most, but totaled out to about a days work, not including tweaks and changes during the proofing process.
I really enjoy seeing projects go from concept to finish piece. My favorite part is always the actual design work but in order for that to go smoothly there are several things that most happen outside of the computer.
I remember meeting with the high school staff and listening to them tell me why they wanted this piece. There first idea was to do a calendar of some sorts to hand out. While this was a good idea, we began to think of the events that would be this calendar. Some of the events didn't hadn't even been finalized and would have to push production back. With further dialogue we agreed that we didn't want this to be content heavy.
By the end of the meeting we both narrowed down the goal of this project which was: to create a save the date mail-out that would be cool enough to hang on a student's refrigerator at home.
The other key ingredient to this was time. Normally we have a two week turnaround. Which by most standards isn't very long. This was a project that could have been done quickly but I'm thankful they gave me plenty of time to finish it.
The whole project from start to finish took almost two months. It's not like we work on it everyday but this help to give me the freedom to experiment with the layout and time to let it sit. For me, I feel I can push a project more if I'm able to walk away from it and come back to it later.
The end result was great, they were happy and so was I. The projects that get me are the ones that I have regrets about, the ones that I wish I could go back and tweak some lighting or another element. With this one as soon as It rolled off the printer I was content.
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