World's Smallest Worship Guide
Even though this was a misprint this sure would be a great way to cut down on printing costs.
Index
When Lowering Expectations Isn't So Bad
Last week I volunteered to pick up some food, from the local Olive Garden, for Lulu's volunteer Christmas party. I showed up about 10 minutes early, payed for the food and I sat down. The waitress said it would be out in 10 minutes. After waiting 20 minutes, I thought, well it's alot of food and they have to pack it up. Around that time the waitress came by again and said it would be out in 5 minutes. Needless to say this continued and "5 minutes" soon turned into "any minute" and then "any second." By the time I got out of there I had been waiting for 50 minutes.
I don't fault them for taking a long time in preparing the order. Working several years in the food industry has made me appreciate what it takes to get orders out. The thing that bugged me the most wasn't the time but the unrealistic expectations that were set.
There has been instances where I have given unrealistic expectations on project deadlines and what can be created with the time allowed. In most cases, this always leads to late nights or upset clients.
What If the waitress would have come to me and said, "Sir, we are really swamped right now and it's going to take longer then expected." I still would probably still be upset but at least that gives them room to surprise me. Same thing with working with departments on projects.
Being upfront and truthful in the beginning gives me the opportunity to surprise the client. Maybe I'm able to turn around a project in one week instead of the three. Or maybe I can spend more time on research and sketching which will in turn give them a better piece at the end.
This is something I need to work on this coming year. Being able to gauge my time and abilities to set real, achievable expectations.
Love Wins Worship Guide
For the new "Love Wins" sermon series I decided to change up the layout of our worship guide. The finish size is a 7in x 7in square. This layout openned up the spacing and I was even able to bump up the text size a bit. There is a huge promo area to highlight key events that require more attention then just being in the upcoming events section. I really like the simplicity of the layout and the ease of one fold.
I've made the layout template file available here. It should work for both CS3 & CS4.
The PSD file of the cover is available here.
Upsidedown Axis
It has been a very productive week here at PVC. I was able to spend some time working on a couple of projects for our student ministries. One of the things I enjoy the most about being a church creative is having the opportunity to work on projects with different audiences. It makes every week here exciting. One minute I'll be working on a men's retreat booklet and then next galaxy art for the High School department.
Here are a few projects I worked on this week for student ministries:
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From Photo-shoot to Finish Piece
Last week I met with the high school youth pastor to talk about their upcoming Beatitudes series. After throwing around some ideas we both agreed on doing something that involved a strong image.
He quickly volunteered the in-house school of discipleship students to brave the heat for this photo shoot.
Out of over 100 pics I took that morning, I ended up going with this overexposed one shown below. I'm sure this would make most photographers cringe, but it really worked with what I wanted to do. The wireless flash on the floor gave it some interesting lighting.
I brought the photo into camera raw to do my initial image processing. Best part about this is that it's non-destructive editing. Bumping up the clarity gave that shadow look behind the models. The rest of the processing was done in photoshop.
Before finishing the photo-shoot I took individual head shots of the models. We later decided that these would make great posters for the room.
Big thanks to the students who helped out on this photoshoot and those from the CMLAB who helped me finalize this project.
I have included a low res PSD file here if you are interested in seeing the rest of the image processing. If you have any questions feel free to ask below.
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The Making Of "The Family Works" Graphic
Before&After: Mexico Outreach Booklet
Encounter Graphics Time Lapse
Below is time lapse video of me designing this sermon series graphic. Because of the crazy schedule this week I had to work on this over three days in bits and pieces. I have to thank all the design peeps, from the Church Marketing Lab & tweeter world, that gave me some great suggestions to finalize this.
The track on the video is "Mystery" by Phil Wickham. Great music when working with stars & galaxies.
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One Minute Through My Eyes (another time lapse video)
Live By The Widget, Die By The Widget
I'm sitting here at home chill-axing after a couple challenging weeks at PVC. This is a busy season for our print production. We had three departments needing well over 1,500 sq. ft. of large format printing for their series set designs. Unfortunately, in the middle of the first set our printer went down. I had never really had any significant problems with the plotter before. To make things worse the technician needed a week before he could even take a look at it.
I had to break the news to the departments, that their sets might not be done in time. Props to them for understanding and quickly moving forward with setting up some "Plan B" solutions. Fortunately, toward the end of this week a church volunteer offered to let us borrow his plotter until ours finished being repaired. MIKE ROCKS!!!
In the middle of dealing with this situation I posted a tweet "Live by the plotter, die by the plotter." This has now became a sobering thought for me. How much have I become dependent on one widget. The more dependent one becomes on a specific resource the larger the void if that resource is not there.
Here are a few practical lessons I learned from this experience:
- Frustration won't fix the problem, exercise calmness.
- Don't be overly optimistic the widget will be up and running quickly.
- Have some "Plan B"solutions ready to go at all times.
- Keep a current list of who can service all widgets used in production.
- Have art deadlines due weeks before production deadlines.
- Set clear expectations to those affected when widgets go down.
Widgets more often then not will break down. While those times can be full of stress in frustration it can also be a opportunity for creative solutions to flourish.
The Making Of "The Family Works" Graphic
The "Family Works" logo has to be one of my favorite pieces I've done here at PVC. Now I can't go back and repeat the exacts steps I took to get to the final image but I can break it down layer by layer. Note: This not a tutorial but more of a break down. If you have any questions drop me a line down below.
Download the PSD source file here.
I started it all with my favorite stars pic.
I added a smart filter blur with a mask so I could have it blurred towards the back where the bars meet in the middle. I also changed the blending mode to hard light.
Then I added a curves adjustment layer and darken the image up, I masked out the middle to give a vignette look.
I duplicated the stars layer, increased the size and flip it. After that I add a gaussian blur and changed the blending option to screen. This made so just the star clusters would show.
For the logo I used a basic font in Illustrator and extended portions of the letters to make the future i-beams. NOTE: I find it easier to work with the 3D lighting in Illustrator when the art is a light grey or white.
I used the 3D extrude & bevel filter to create the basic frame of the logo.
I brought the logo in as a smart object into photoshop. I added a color effect with the blending mode set to color. I also added a gradient with the blending mode set to multiply. This added some darkness to the bottom of the logo.
To get the i-beam look I drew 2 shapes. One is for the inside part of the beam and the other the far back side of the beam. I also added a gradient from left to right to give it some shading.
Then I brought in a metal texture and used the selection of the original logo to place a mask on the texture.
I then set the blending mode of the texture too overlay.
I made a duplicate of the original smart object logo. Added a blur to it and then changed the blending mode too color dodge. This is what gave the text art a glow.
For the bolts I went back to illustrator, created a simple hexagon and used the 3D extrude filter on it. On a side note: I wanted to make sure to get the angle and proportions right on the text art. To do so I took a screen shot of the logo in PS and place it in Illustrator to use as a backdrop.
I brought the bolts into PS and added some color along with some lines.
For the various gears I used some more stock vector files.
I brought them into photoshop and added color layer effects. On some of them I added a black & white gradient with a blending mode set to multiply to give it some shading. In addition to that I applied a smart filter blur to help give it a greater depth of field.
To finish it off I created a new layer and filled it with a diagonal line pattern. I changed the blending option to soft light. Here's a place where you can see some tutorials on line patterns.
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Burgers, Fries & Graphics
Last Friday I had one action item left for the week, "design WHY series graphic". Honestly my brain was already thinking about how much German sausage I was going to consume in Fredericksburg during Lu and I weekend getaway. It usually takes me a while to finalize series graphics. At times I like to work on it and shelve it for a day or so and go back to it. This time I was determine to get it done. The whole piece quickly came together in about three hours.
So I sent a proof out, crossed my fingers and waited. Pretty soon I got a response back that it was good to go with a minor tweak. Yes, no revamp no having to go back to the drawing table (ok, so i don't really draw). I love it when that happens. I find satisfaction when I'm able to translate the passion and message of the communicator into graphic form.
How come this project came so easily? I'm not that good. I soon realize it was the burger and fries that the youth pastor invited me to a couple of months back. We chatted about the "why" series he was wanting to start in the summer. I was able to hear his passion and reasoning behind the series. That's something you just can't get from a request form.
That morning as I worked on the graphic I kept referencing back to our conversation. I believe that graphic wouldn't be what it was if those conversations would not have happened.
I learned a valuable lesson this week, something that maybe I have overlooked before. I am at my best as a graphic artist when I am able to hear the heart and passion of the communicator.
I want to challenge all my deisgn peeps out there to look pass the deadlines, requests, creativity, etc., and have some conversations with those you are designing for. And if you work with a designer, I challenge you to take them out for burgers and fries.
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The Family Works Series Design
We just started a new series this past weekend titled "THE FAMILY WORKS". We wanted something fresh and fun that would carry over 8 weeks.
A few days before going to print we had a change of direction along with a new series title. The whole process was stretching but also came with a great sense of accomplishment when finished.
I have to give some props to the team members here at PVC that helped me push through the design. I love that these guys aren't impressed with my bag of tricks but can tell it like it is.
I'm sure it would have been easier to create this using some sort of 3D software but I can't use what I don't have. I created the basic shapes in Illustrator and apply the 3D bevel effect. After bringing the pieces into photoshop I adjusted colors, and added textures. I also used some blurring effects to give it some depth.
One of the things we like to do every quarter is switch up the worship guide layout. This is a pretty basic layout nothing fancy just cut to bleed and folded in half. The simplicity of the layout helped give more real estate for body copy. I was able to bump up our normal body text up one point. (very exciting stuff, well at least for those with reading glasses)
The production team came up with a sick stage design. Thank God for volunteers, air guns & spandex. They were able to transform the stage in 2 days. They built a 14ft x 7ft screen for the middle and mounted a old projector to splash stills and video.
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Before&After: Worship Guides AKA Bulletin