Tools Of The Trade!

I'm a strong believer that tools shouldn't make or break a project.  But having them sure helps.  I've been asked several times what we use to produce our printed pieces here at PVC.  These tools have helped saved time and money and are a vital part of our production.  

HP DesignJet z2100:

This bad boy is our large format printer! It prints 41 inch wide by up too 150 ft long.  We use this primarily for stage set backdrops.  We occasionally use it for large posters and displays as well.  You can easily pay $7sq.ft. at our local printing shop.  Having this in-house has brought the cost down to about $1sq.ft 

Xerox Docucolor 252

This machine is a little less then a year old.  We use this primarily for color printing of  posters, worship guides, hand outs, books and so on.  Before we got this printer it would take half a day to print our worship guides for the weekends.  Now we can get them all printed in about a hour or less.  It has a high capacity feed for large print up too 13x19 paper.  It also has a booklet finisher.  Only cons is that it's loud and hot.  We use to have it in our office and would have to have the AC pumping non stop.  

Industria 480E Paper Cutter

The newest addition to the family.  Producing anything with a bleed use to be a nightmare.  We had to take stuff to a print shop and have it cut.  After having several deadlines not met and time when the cuts were wrong we decided on getting our own machine.  After months of researching I found this cutter and it was the best product for the price.  It' cuts our 17 in. paper in 2 in. stacks.  It's a very easy to use machine.  Now we're able to turn around jobs more quickly with options of using bleed cuts.  I LOVE THIS THING!!!

Martin Yale 959 Auto Folder

Not the most glamorous of the bunch but it's another time saver.  When I got here they use to fold all worship guides by hand.  They also did perforation by hand as well.  This particular folder does double folds, perforation and even scoring.  This one is a tricky beast.  You have to look at it just right or it might jam.  But it does make it life easier.  

These are some of the tools we are using here if you have any question feel free to ask.  

Gotta Love Istock

Istockphoto.com has to be one of my biggest resources when it come down to crunch time.  Now I'm a believer of being original and taking the photo if you have the resources to do it.  But sometime there just isn't enough time.  This is where istock comes in handy.

This design below was made using the lower images off of istock.  This is a very bussy week and didn't have time to go out and take pictures or even sketchup the design.  The great thing is I can probably use these images again for something else down the road.  

iJoe gets some blog love!

I spent some time skimming through a few of my favorite blogs.  Occasionally I like to go to the original sites to see if there is anything different or sometimes just to give me the break of looking over boring feeder test.  There is this great site churchmarketingsucks.com aka CMS (name explained here).  

As I scrolled my way down the page, pass the story of the sky diving pastor and pass the church who refused $600,000 from a lottery winner, something took me by surprise.  There in the middle of the page I began to read one of the lines.  "Palm", hey wait a second I know what those are they're all over our building and I've seen them for sale on North Conway all the way to the flea market.  Then, "Valley" like in the RIO GRAND VALLEY.  By this time the adrenaline started kicking in and sweat began to roll off my fingers unto my keyboard as I waited in anticipation.  When I finally got to the word "Church" It click, that's me!  

I couldn't believe it!  One of the logos I had been working on for PVCGroups was on there.  I submitted it to the Church Marketing Lab through flickr to get some feedback on it.  With the labs help I was able to address some of my flaws in the design and came up with a polished piece I was proud of.  

The CMS site has been a valuable resources since I've stepped into church communication world.  They do a great job of making relevant articles available on anything having to do with church marketing.  From practical articles on multisite venues too ones that make you spin around and say, "you can do that at church!" there is sure to be something for everyone.  Ewh that sounded like like a bad advertising line from my newspaper days.  

As a growing designer and church marketing lab has been a vital sources of feedback, critique and inspiration.  There is a wide range of people in this group: pastors, volunteers, artists, CEO's of design firms and even the occasional church secretary.  From a wide background of experiences and denominations.  But all with the same goal to see the church better its communication. 

As I sign off I'd like to formally thank CMS for all they are doing and for making me look ten times smarter at our creative meetings.  And the lab for always pushing my designs instead of settling for "good enough".  But most importantly to God, for being the creative genius behind everything and for bring these groups together.