Worship Presentation Made Easy
In celebration of the newly released ProPresenter version 4, I wanted to take a few minutes and introduce everyone to the incredibly powerful and user-friendly lyric presentation software that’s being used in churches and ministries around the nation. However, in order to understand the ease of use and power behind ProPresenter, it’s [...]
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I’ve been involved in ministry for almost ten years now. . . which means a few things:
“That’s great, Nick. Congratulations. You should make a quilt or a sail with all that fabric. What does that have to do with my ministry?”
It’s been a few weeks now since we started this thing here at New Media Ministry. It’s been a few years, however, from the beginning of my time as a designer. For the few years that I’ve been designing, my main market has been the Church and ministry organizations. What I’ve heard from our new friends (via the site, Facebook page, Twitter, etc.) about their perception of design is not much different than what I’ve heard along the way from my clients and friends in ministry.
The overwhelming consensus is that great design really does matter. People know (without maybe being able to articulate why) that design has an effect on their audience and there is an understanding that relevant and great looking promotional materials make a difference in the response they get from the people they’re ministering too. Unfortunately most of the time, this understanding is coupled with the reservation that spending time learning design concepts or even hiring someone to help make materials is just too expensive and too time consuming. So how can it be that a fundamental part in the process of evangelization isn’t worth investing in? I think there’s a relatively simple explanation for this.
With a new year and a new decade come new trends: trends in fashion, music, film and so on. It is vital to follow not only these trends, but also trends specific to design and marketing when creating pieces for your ministry. As I discussed last week, continuing to stay relevant is essential in the success of your promotional ads and artwork.
One of the best ways to follow design and marketing trends is to pay attention to color trends. Color can speak more than the information given if used well, and it can also turn your audience’s attention away if used poorly.
So you have an event coming up. A talk series for young adults, a semester kick off for your teen group, or even just a fun bowling night planned. There’s not anything different about this new event necessarily, but there IS something that separates you from the other things happening in your audience’s life: You want to talk to them about their life, challenges, triumphs and struggles. You want to talk to them about Jesus and the Church and THAT is a great thing. The not-so-great thing? You may have very little idea how to communicate these things through your church bulletin, a poster, a picture, a website, or social media profile. How can you design materials that are eye-catching and relevant if your best tool is Paint or Microsoft Word? You might even be lucky enough to have some Adobe products (Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign), but have no idea what interface is used for.
