This past weekend we launched a new sermon series at PVC. The series is primarily based on the idea of the positive impact we should have and how those experiences connect to others.
The design itself was pretty simple, a image with some vector connection orbs and a bit curves color toning. The haziness of the image and how it focused not on the person but the action of touching something is what I wanted to communicate.
Once the artwork was approved the idea of making it into a bumper video came up. This was a challenge our team quickly jumped on.
The frosted galss look was accomplished by sitcking a window treatment film, we purchased at Home Depot for $20, over a normal piece of plexiglass. The rest was editing magic by my brother Oz.
Two weeks back I came off one of the most productive weeks I had in the office in a while. We cranked out two sermon series branding packages in that week. You can check out that post here.
This past week was a different story. Monday I found out I had a pretty big typo in the weekend worship guide. Yes, it was proofed by three others eyes, but I still can't help to take the blame for it. Tuesday I came down sick and couldn't make it work. Wednesday I found myself trying to squeeze in two days of work in one while still not feeling %100. Thursday, I slept through the morning alarm. Haven't done that in a while and felt like a fool coming in late to work. By Friday I was ready for the day to be over. My buddy Mitch even commented, "what's wrong with you this week? You're off your game."
Yup, one of those weeks that probably isn't vey blog worthy. I was thinking what lessons can I learn from weeks like these. Here are few I came up with.
I think sometimes as creatives we are looking to knock everything we do out of the park week after week. That pace just isn't sustainable. I'm glad to be a part of a team that can help carry loads.
You can't have the highs without the lows. In retrospect the week wasn't really that bad, it's been worse. But without low days, weeks or projects there will never be highs.
It's humbling to know that it's not by my own works, not by my photoshop skills, not by my strength but it's by the grace of God that everything works together for our good.
No matter had bad it gets, someone else in the world probably has it worse.
It's a great opportunity to count my blessings. I have a beautiful supportive wife, and healthy daughter great family and friends.
I could go one, but the most important thing I learned is not matter what happens God is still Good. I'm praying this next week turns our better but if not, God is still Good.
Its always a productive week when you can start Monday with a blank slate and leave home Friday, having finished two series brands and a video bumper. Huge props to our team for helping pull that all off.
This first one is a series call "Peeled" that our teaching pastor Jerell Jobe started this past Wednesday. We had just finished a long series that started Ash Wednesday and lead up to Easter. I wanted to create something different and fresh.
It was Tuesday morning and I still had a blank canvas. That's when Mitch approached me and ask if he could offer some inspiration help. That was golden. He came up with the ideal about using an orange peel. From there I weighed a couple of options. At first I thought about using different fruit textures and making the lettering peel. Another idea was to use a different fruit for each week. I finally decided to just buy a couple of oranges and experiment with some photos. The $4 on oranges was not only cheaper then hitting up istockphoto.com it was also tastier.
After taking the photos it all came together quickly, by the end of the day, the artwork was approved and all the collateral pieces were made.
The second project was one we started talking about a couple of weeks back. The series "Courageous Living" is based on the book of Habakuk. The series is covering different aspect of courage in everyday life. The video idea came from wanting to show ordinary people, doing what they do, but having something that would symbolize that they are living courageous. We defiantly didn't want to go the SUPERHERO route, or anything over the top. We thought of people wearing a cape in ordinary situations. Thanks to our in-house seamstress, Cierra, she was able to create a couple options for our video shoots.
The print design was heavily influence by the video shoot. I just used some photos of the cape and carried those over to screen and print graphics.
I'm very please how both these projects turned out. Especially after sitting here and thinking these were both created in a weeks time.
This also shows that sometimes the best solutions is the simplest ones. A strong image with a nice typeface can go a long way.
Sermon branding has to be the favorite part of what I do here at PVC. I love the whole process from sitting in sermon planning meetings to designing concepts and then seeing all the pieces come together at the end. These my top five favorite sermon series graphics of 2010.
Regeneration: Was the first series of 2010.
Perspectives of Jesus: This was a fun one to design. The series was based on the different images and how they represented Christ. You can check out some of the original images I used to create the graphic here.
Going Places: I'm always up for the challenge of pulling off faux 3D using Illustrator and photoshop.
Faith & Luck: This was my favorite of the year. I love how the branding extended beyond print and ended up with a pretty crazy stage set. You can check out that set here.
Contagious Christianity: I really like the simplicity of the look for this series. Check out the sermon bumper my brother Oz created for it here.
It feels like life has been running at 100mph the last four months. I'm finally at a point where I can pause and reflect on the past few months. God has been really good to me and my family.
This fall we purchased our first home. This was something that we weren't really planning to look into until next year. It was all a blur, somehow God opened the right doors and now Lu and I our homeowners. The house was very affordable and right off the bat we knew that it would be a fixer upper. We've already managed to remodel a restroom and now are in the middle of fixing up the guest room. I love the remodeling process, I think I've found a new hobby.
On October 26th we were blessed to receive our first baby girl. Abigail was born weighing in at a healthy 8lbs 1oz. As soon as I saw her and heard her first cries I knew that my life would never be the same. She has been a huge blessing in our lives. She's already taught me some huge lessons on patience and has helped me put things into perspective.
The plan was for Lu to go back to work after maternity leave, however that quickly changed after the first couple of days being with Abby. We both agreed it would be best for her to become a full-time mom. This has been one of the biggest decisions we have made as a couple. It may mean we live on a tighter budget then what we planned but we both know it's best for our baby girl and that God will supply like always.
Life at PVC has been just as crazy. On December 5th we moved into our new Auditorium. With the new Auditorium came new technology with steeper learning curves. One of the biggest differences was going from a dual screen setup to one triple-wide blended screen. If you want to learn a little more about that be sure to check out this post here.
On top of the new building we found ourselves going into the Christmas season which is production heavy. There wasn't a actual Christmas series this year, so the graphic content changed from week to week. These are a couple of the looks from the weekend services.
One thing that I find unique about our church is that most of the production team who is making content for the weekend is also musicians or somehow involved on stage any given Sunday. I along with my brother Oz were asked to help with the opener for our Christmas service. Here's our version of Family Force Five's "Carol of the bells".
2011 has already off to a busy start. I'm looking forward to what God has this year. Now that I'm getting into a regular rhythm I hope for more post to come.
On December 5th we opened our new auditorium at PVC. We went from a dual screen setup to one triple wide screen. The screen physically measures out to 11ft x 50ft.
Our setup gives us flexibility to project different sources to the canvas. This could be anything from full graphic or video, and even picture in picture. This gives us the ability to go from a center video over a graphic to a full screen lyrics over motion video to speaking IMAG over graphics with side notes. Though I've only work with these dimensions for a couple of weeks I can't help but think of the possibilities with working with such a unique space.
This image with the strings was live IMAG with a transparent PNG file on a top layer, to give the illusion the live video was blending into the sky.
Below are a few examples of the graphics built out for the screen and some photos of them projected in service.
I'm blessed to work with a talented team who is passionate about what they do. It takes alot more then graphics to pull a service off, everything from lighting, staging, song selection, video production, and live IMAG goes into planning each service. Which makes for some intense discussions through out the week. We have one goal and that's to create a distraction free environment where believers and non believers can come in worship and receive life through God's word.
Be sure to check Mankin Media, they are the company that helped create and deploy the system we are using.
A few weeks back we launched our fall groups. These groups included everything from financial classes to flag football. Instead of trying to promo each group independently we worked on pushing the idea of "life is better in groups."
We wanted these videos to be fun and playful. Huge props to the creative team and David, the actor, for making these videos a huge hit.
Three days before leaving on vacation I found out that we were going to change directions on a series that was starting that weekend.
Since I only had a couple of hours to turn this project around I went with a simple stock image, some color treatment and plain text.
They liked the art so much the next questions was, "Can we make that into a video." Being short on time we starting looking at stock video options. Most of them range from $75-$300 and weren't exactly what we were looking for.
Instead, I went and pickuped a box of matches from the dollar store, and the rest was tv magic. We first tried stacking the matches side to side but found that it would burn too quickly. We used the opposite ends of the matches as spacers to give a even gap between the matches. This help slowing down the burning affect.
I really liked how the finished piece turned out, proves that design doesn't always have to be jaw dropping or overly complicated to effectively communicate. I'm really proud to work with a team that can come together to turnaround a project like this in a few days time.
Check out the finished bumper video below.
On another note, the music came from a new resources we found out about, audiojungle.net. They have a wide selection of tracks and reasonably priced.
A couple of months back I met with our high school ministry team. regarding their new series that was coming up, "Guardrails." Artwork wise the concept was pretty simple. In order to take it up a level we decided to carry the look across the stage wall. We wanted students to feel they were looking across a canyon as they entered the room.
Once the right image was chosen, I sized it up to the proportions of the walls. I cut out the projector screen and used that as a presentation graphic. We printed out wallpaper like strips of the image, using our 41in plotter.
The high school staff did a great job putting up the wall graphic and constructing the guardrails, which was constructed using pvc pipe which was spray painted metallic silver.
I've been wanting to post this art for a while and was able to get to it today. AXIS, is our high school ministry here at the church. They came to me at the beginning of the year wanting to give their meeting room a face lift. We agreed on doing some wall art that had the key principles that they would be touching on through out the year.
Here's a little time-lapse of the making of it along with a short clip oh how it looks installed in the room.
