Church Design Matters

Church design matters…at least hundreds at the HOW Design Conference thought so.

In a recent posting in Church Marketing Sucks, guest blogger Michael Buckingham writes of his exciting opportunity to present a church marketing and design topic at the HOW Design Conference. For those of you unfamiliar to the industry, HOW is a leader in graphic design publications and conferences. It’s not exactly the conference you’d expect to host a church-related topic.

Buckingham writes that he anticipated “maybe a half-dozen people” to show up for his portion of the conference. Instead it was standing room only. And not only did people come, they discussed, asked questions and stayed afterward.

How exciting is that?!

This is an awesome affirmation of God’s hand at work. It’s great to see people recognizing the need for quality graphic design in church communications. And it’s fantastic to know we can learn from what normally is an extremely secular industry and apply it to our spiritual mission.

God works in wondrous ways!

Working With a Graphic Designer

One of my clients says I speak a language different than the normal person. This guy, in fact, says it to quite a few people, many of whom I hope will also be my clients.

Should I be concerned? Not really.

This guy is Jeff Davis, of Cornerstone Stewardship Ministy, and he provides spiritual stewardship solutions for churches and schools, a process that often involves extensive visual communication. When speaking of my unusual language, he’s referring to the idiosyncrasies common to the design industry. Foreign as they may seem, these procedures, technicalities and details all make a difference in creating a successful publication.

As a customer, you can enhance the work your graphic designer does for you. Whether or not you speak the language, there are things you can do to bring your publication from mediocre to great and from expensive to cost-effective.

Blogging: Cyber-Savvy Outreach

Ah, the world demands so much from churches, eh?

You’ve published a website and are feeling somewhat caught up with modern technology. But wait, a website is now so…well, not quite passé, but let’s just say…expected. As a church, what could you now be doing to reach out with the message of Christ?

Blogging

Blogging is one of the latest social phenomena for connecting people, along with MySpace, Facebook, Flickr and other ever-evolving online communities. Trying to keep up with technology can leave us feeling lost and out of date. But before you scoff blogging off as just another distraction from the one needful thing—God’s Word—take a moment to learn how easily it can spread God’s message faster and farther than ever before.

Raising Sheep

So, I raise sheep.

I live on a small farm and raise a flock of wool sheep for absolutely no reason other than they’re cute. I pretend to be a spinner and make cool things with the wool, but in truth, I never find the time and my spinning wheel sits in the living room gathering dust. My family hassles me about the uselessness of my sheep. But, hey, they’re so cute!

Save the Sermon for Sunday

Have I mentioned we don’t read much? One of the greatest mistakes in church communication, especially in newsletters, is length. Verbose preaching. Wordiness. If the article is too long, the average reader won’t give it a glance.

And so we continue on with Church Newsletter 202, with a focus on maintaining the reader’s attention.

Writing for a newsletter is different than writing for other media. Articles must be short and give immediate information. Unless you’re an extremely fascinating writer—and most of us are not—your article is too long if you’ve hit 300 words.

Write tight, cut the clutter

• Maximum sentence length: 15 words
• Maximum paragraph length: 45 words
• Eliminate unnecessary “that” and “of” words
• Edit the whole artice, then each paragraph and finally each sentence. Cut, cut, cut.

Church Newsletter 202: Font

“Typography exists to honor content,” writes Robert Bringhurst in the designer’s bible “The Elements of Typographic Style.”

Typography, typefaces, fonts…we hear these terms often in the design world. Technically they are not all the same. For our purposes, however, we won’t go into such mundane details. Just know that the visual appearance of your words is important to your newsletter. The type you choose and how you use it can make the difference in members reading your newsletter or tossing it aside.

Church Newsletter 202: Layout

Okay, we’ve got the imagery. We’ve got the font. Now let’s lay out the newsletter.

Studies show—yes, people have actually tracked readers’ eye movements—that layout of the newsletter greatly influences its legibility. Our eyes naturally read from left to right so think of our reading pattern as a large “Z” over the page. Often a designer will place an attention-getting photo at the top left of the Z, the words following to the right, and so forth down the Z. Arrange design elements in a manner that creates visual balance throughout the page.

Church Newsletter 202: Imagery

We’ve determined newsletters play an important role in church communications. We’ve also covered the basics of creating that important newsletter. Now, let’s get into the nitty gritty of attracting those readers.

Imagery
While there are many elements of good newsletter design, first and foremost is the fact that a newsletter must be more than words. As babies, we see before we talk. As children, we look at pictures before we read. As adults, we’re drawn to photos before words.

Good images tell the story even before words do. They draw the reader into the words in search of more information.

What makes a good image? Well, what makes up your congregation? People, right? By nature, people are most interested in other people and studies show images of people capture our attention first. Narrow the field even further and we’re most drawn to faces, namely the eyes.

Church Newsletter 101

Outside Sunday bulletins, the church newsletter is perhaps the most common form of communication to your congregation. As much as churches vary from one another, so do the newsletters they publish. From electronic versions to traditional hard copies, the one common thread is that most of them aren’t getting read.

Let’s be real here.

We’re busy. We don’t read much. And we have short attention spans. The 30-3-30 rule says “Eighty percent of people will spend only 30 seconds reading your newsletter, 19 percent will spend three minutes and only one percent will spend thirty minutes.”

Form vs. Function: Churches too?

Form and function. This is a catch phrase we hear quite often, but what exactly is it? How does this worldly concept apply to our spiritual endeavors?

Form is beauty. Function is utilization. Form is a fine lace scarf. Function is how well, or not, it keeps me warm on a cold winter day (which by the way, we’re getting quite a few of here in Wisconsin).

Many argue which is holds greater value, but, in reality, they are of equal importance and dependent upon one another. This is especially true in visual communications. We need an attractive newsletter to capture the viewer’s attention. We need functional words to maintain that attention and convey our message.