Totally Famous
A while back Jim LePage and his friend Troy DeShano invited me to take part in the Old & New project illustrating a bunch of bits of the bible. I said, yes. (Obvs.) My piece was posted on 18 April. Hooray! They have also posted an email interview with me where I kind of explain it.
Here are a couple detail shots:
19 April 2012
tags: design,
illustration,
ot,
photography
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Olde and Neue
A couple of artsy/designy guys, Jim ‘Look at the extra capital letter in my last name’ LePage and Troy ‘I’ve got one too’ DeShano, decided that it is time to bring back art inspired by the bible – they’re right, of course – so they created the Old and New Project. They very kindly asked me to be a contributor. I’m no Michaelangelo, but I drew a picture on my wall anyway. You will be able to see it sometime in the next few weeks. Don’t wait for my scribblings; the site is live now.
14 March 2012
tags: design,
illustration,
nt,
ot
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I made a Christmas gift for the kids in my class at church: a book of advice
17 December 2011
tags: books,
design,
illustration,
love,
non-violence,
questions
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This is what the talented and attractive Jim LePage has to say about nonviolence
In my opinion, responding to evil with evil is one of the least creative things we humans can do. In a very literal sense, it is dumb. If someone is abusive towards me… my instinct is to do the same thing to them. You hurt me, I hurt you. It’s a repeating pattern. That instinct and pattern are so strong that it doesn’t even occur to me that there could be any other options… I think the reason I often think there’s only one response to evil (more evil) is because I don’t allow the creativity of Jesus in on my situations.
See what Jim did there? Nonviolence causes creativity. Read the full post. (The creativity bit is toward the bottom.)
29 September 2011
tags: design,
non-violence,
quotes
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2+2=4
Most every week I write two classes for young teens, a comedy(ish) sketch, work on at least two graphic design projects, and draw a picture or two. This is my starting point: The solution is contained in the problem.
In graphic design the most elegant work is based on the geometry of the content. That’s my opinion anyway. An example: when I worked for Halen Môn, the Anglesey Sea Salt Company, my designs we all based on squares, because salt crystals are square. For me discovering self-sorting internal order is more pleasing than importing a grid from Switzerland.
I think the same is true in most of life. The solution is already contained in the problem. The skill of the creator/problem-solver/parent/counsellor/&c. is to See.
Two plus two is obviously four.
Is it? Imagine being faced with this unknown symbol: 2, then a cross, then another curly-on-top-flat-on-the-bottom symbols, then two parallel lines. They look like they mean something, but it’s hardly obvious that they mean an angled line overlapping a straight line. That’s why we teach little children to add with objects. We help them to see:
When you are creating or solving a problem, maybe the first thing to do is to spend time seeing what you are working with in a bunch of different ways. Understand its geometry (actual or metaphorical, depending on what you are working on).
Here’s a different kind of example from Tommy Barnett, pastor of a big church in Phoenix, Arizona. One of the reasons why his church is so big is because he understands that the solution is contained in the problem. He wrote a book worth reading called There’s a Miracle in Your House that introduced me to this way of looking for ideas and answers. (I can’t help but think that if the designer had understood the contents of the book, they would have done a better cover.) The central story from the book is from the bible, 2 Kings 4.
The wife of a man from the company of the prophets cried out to Elisha, ‘Your servant my husband is dead, and you know that he revered the LORD. But now his creditor is coming to take my two boys as his slaves.’
Elisha replied to her, ‘How can I help you? Tell me, what do you have in your house?’
‘Your servant has nothing there at all,’ she said, ‘except a little olive oil.’
Elisha said, ‘Go around and ask all your neighbors for empty jars. Don’t ask for just a few. Then go inside and shut the door behind you and your sons. Pour oil into all the jars, and as each is filled, put it to one side.’
She left him and shut the door behind her and her sons. They brought the jars to her and she kept pouring. When all the jars were full, she said to her son, ‘Bring me another one.’
But he replied, ‘There is not a jar left.’
Then the oil stopped flowing.
She went and told the man of God, and he said, ‘Go, sell the oil and pay your debts. You and your sons can live on what is left.’ (TNIV)
If you have a problem to solve or a thing to create, you get to play the role of the prophet Elisha, and see the potential of the oil.
1 April 2011
tags: creativity,
design
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Don't (always) make things
If a sustainable life is to be less about stuff, and more about people – with few new buildings and products being made – what is there left for designers and artists to do?
A big part of the answer is to seek out daily life solutions that already exist… and then to adapt and improve them for new contexts.
As a designer my default setting is Make Something New. But there are billions of things that are Already Made. More and more the best answer is to use something already made. This applies to all areas of life, not just design.
But seeing as I am writing about design right now, have a look at the Useful things you can do with a Wii Remote:
1 November 2008
tags: cost-cutting,
design,
video
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Uselessly beautiful
Yesterday, I received these two lovely pieces of mail:
Keep reading
23 October 2008
tags: communication,
design,
failure
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DIY design: toolbox 8 - vector graphics software
Sorry about the long break. I got really bored of this series for a while.
Vector graphics are infinitely scalable. That’s because they are not made of pixels. Instead they are sets of instructions for your computer about how to draw shapes and lines and fills. Fonts are vector graphics. That’s why you can set fonts to be any size you want.
You need vector graphics software if you are going to be making logos or complicated shapes or illustrations on your computer. Here is a simple example.
I typed this in my vector graphics software:
Then I spent a few hours modifying the letter and numbers to turn them into our church’s logo:
Here is a massively more complex use of vector graphics software. Go have a look. It is really worth your time.
The only serious professional vector graphics software on the market today is Adobe Illustrator. It costs £569.88, or £1,051.62 if you by the whole Adobe Creative Suite.
For Mac users there are two decent low price applications, Lineform and VectorDesigner. I have VectorDesigner, but I don’t use it. I use an old version of the sadly deceased Macromedia Freehand
The Open Source vector graphics application for Linux, Mac and Windows is called Inkscape. It is supposed to be quite good, but I can’t make it open on my computer.
If I was starting from scratch today, I would search Ebay until I found a reasonably priced, reasonably new version of Adobe Illustrator and start climbing up its steepish learning curve. the cheap appications are fine, I guess, but every time I decide to give VectorDesigner another try I get frustrated with what it can’t do. That was how it was with the trial of Lineform that I used for a while too.
Now you know.
Next I will recapture my interest (and possibly lose yours) when I write about fonts.
17 August 2008
tags: design
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Epiphany is a strong word for something so obvious
After two years of helping to run a church my brain has finally started working. I just remembered what I’m good at:
- Connecting with and being liked and trusted by the people who run things
- The hustle – talking to people, selling ideas, making things happen
- Design thinking – coming up with the right idea to meet the need
- Presentation, especially on stage in front of an audience
I used these four abilities to build a design studio from nothing to way-way-way-too-busy in four years. Then I joined the i61 church plant and forgot. For two years, I have been making a lot of pretty things, physically and spiritually, for i61. I have been using those four skills to some degree in the church, but hardly at all to connect the church with the community.
When I went to work full time for i61 18 months ago, I had the idea of approaching ministry as a design job. I wanted to bring the thinking and creative skills that I had developed in five years as a designer to a new arena. But my ideas about how to do it were not well formed. It was all too nebulous, and it didn’t work. I soon slipped back into the place that was the norm for me during Ministry Career 1 in America: in front of the computer, comfortably afraid of doing the Things That A Person In Ministry Should Be Doing. I knew that i61 couldn’t operate very well without me, but What Was I There For, Really?
Was I actually contributing to the advancement of the kingdom of God? I’ve had very real doubts about that. It wasn’t a lack of ideas – I always have a million of those. It was a lack of connection. I wasn’t connecting what I am good at with the work of building God’s kingdom. I was trying to fit myself into my idea of what A Person In Ministry ought to be doing without even being fully aware that I had such an idea.
When I started my design studio. I had the advantage of not knowing how to be a graphic designer or how to run a business. I needed to feed my family and pay bills, so I just got on with it. When I went to work for i61 I had a decade of ministry experience and a lot of new ideas telling me what I should do. Somehow those things didn’t connect with what I can do best, what makes me thrive.
Last night in the bath, the place where most good thoughts are thought, I remembered the things that make me thrive. And for the first time I connected them with the works of God. Bam. I felt like I retrieved piece of myself from the shelf, the feisty bit that likes people and makes things happen.
The catalyst for this connection was a meeting with a high school assistant head teacher. I was talking to her about an event we do called Hi, School! Just having a meeting with someone outside of the church world was a buzz. During the meeting she invited me to do some school assemblies. I came alive inside. Here was a chance to start something. Starting things makes me happy.
Then I felt guilty. Shouldn’t I be focussing on what I’m already doing? This doesn’t fit perfectly with some of my New Ideas Of How To Do Ministry. If I like it, it is probably because it is an old, and therefore ineffective, way of doing things.
Fortunately, I came to my senses and realised that I get thrilled standing up in front of a crowd of teenagers and talking about the kingdom of God because Jesus in me gets thrilled to talk to a crowd of teenagers about the kingdom of God. It is one of the things I’m built to do.
That excitement has been bouncing around in me for a week, and last night it bounced off all the right things at once and gave me this really obvious realisation: The things that I love to do and do well are the things that will make me most effective in getting the good news of the kingdom of God to my community.
Damn the theories. I’m finally ready for action.
19 June 2008
tags: church,
design,
failure,
kingdom of god,
leadership
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DIY design 7 - using templates
Whatever design software you are using, it probably came with a bunch of templates.
Templates can be quite useful, if you know how to use them. Here’s how to use them:
Don’t start with the template. Start with what you want to communicate. What look and feel will reinforce your message? Once you know that, start looking at the templates. If you work in this order, your choices will be guided by your message, not by your software. If you are making a leaflet for your summer kids program and the Catering Brochure template is the best fit, use it.
Change it (if you have time). Be bold. Mess with the fonts and the colours. Use your own images. Just make sure that your changes are consistent. Make changes all across the document, not just here and there. The best way to do that is to change the document styles, rather than individual blocks of text.
I thought there was going to be a third point, but there isn’t.
28 May 2008
tags: design
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Too good
Seth Godin wrote a couple days ago about the importance of letting the evidence of human involvement be visible sometimes.
I think the promotion of the kids thing we are doing Wednesday is a good example. I made some fun and pretty invitations and laser printed them on card.
Front:
Back:
As I was distributing them about the neighbourhood, they started seeming too good. They weren’t quite right. I would have felt a lot more comfortable giving out pieces of paper with the details hand-written on them. That would have been inviting. Somehow what I was doing felt more like selling.
It’s okay. The reason we are doing this now is to start learning how.
26 May 2008
tags: children,
church,
community,
design
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DIY design 6 - toolbox: finding images
Let’s review what we have covered so far in the DIY design series
- Start with the right attitudes
- The obligatory and boring post on hardware
- Page layout software
- Image editing software (Photoshop, etc.)
If you are a creative person you haven’t been sitting around twiddling your mouse waiting for me to write this post. You probably found where to get images already. Nevertheless, I shall continue writing.
Unless you are a World-Famous Graphic Designer your image budget is probably about £0. That’s okay. It is 2008; everything is free. Just search Google for whatever you want. Copy. Paste. Voila!
WRONG.
Those images took time, energy and creativity to create. If you use them without permission, you are stealing. Thou shalt not. Also, my favourite wife, Christine The Photographer, and I, the World-Famous Graphic Designer will be very cross with you.
Instead, visit stock.xchng. They have over of 360,000 image. All are free. Many are very good. There is very little snapshotty stuff. Be sure to give proper credit to the photographers where required.
If stock.xchng doesn’t have what you need, do a Creative Commons search of Flickr. I recommend searching tags only and sorting by most interesting.
Morgue File is also good.
And there is lots more here.
You will have projects where none of these sources has the image you need. I suggest you do one of the following:
- Draw or make or photograph the image yourself.
- Make friends with a photographer now.
- Think – there may be a different and possibly better way to tell your story.
If for some reason you do have an image budget find a good photographer and hire them. If that won’t work, visit Getty Images or Alamy.
11 May 2008
tags: design
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More good Samaritan
Our news sheet was very personalised this week, thanks to Google Earth:
The pub where we meet is touching the y in the copyright notice. The town just of the right of the i61 is Conwy.
20 April 2008
tags: design,
i61
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DIY design 5 - toolbox: images
Okay, you’ve got a computer and some page layout software. It’s time to make something, but you need some images, and when you find some you will probably need to work on them. So where do you find images and how do you go from this…
Keep reading
15 April 2008
tags: design
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Six proof-reading tips
Access Elevation is a behind the scenes blog of a young, fast-growing multi-site church. Their graphic designer Ryan Hollingsworth has posted six very good tips for avoiding the dreaded typo. Go read them.
Mr Hollingsworth also wrote:
Good design goes a long way when you’re developing print materials for your church. But it quickly can become all for naught if your print piece comes back from the printer with misspelled word or misplaced period. Like a pimple on prom night, it doesn’t matter how pretty your dress is – everyone else is only seeing the zit. Without good proofing, one glaring error that would have taken just a second to fix now seemingly negates hours of quality design work.
Notice the word seemingly. This is important. You’ve probably realised by now that the pimple on prom night isn’t disaster they told you it was in the Clearasil ads.
Do follow Ryan’s advice. Make sure at least three people proof everything important. But when a mistake slips through, remember: It’s just a pimple.
8 April 2008
tags: design,
writing
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DIY design 4 - toolbox: page layout software
You have a computer. What software do you put on it?
Everything that you make, except for websites, is going to end up on a page. (Of course, that ‘page’ may be a bulletin, poster, sign, business card, booklet or PDF.) If you are going to build a page, you need page layout software. For decent page layout there are only 2.5 choices.
Keep reading
7 April 2008
tags: design
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DIY design 3 - toolbox: hardware
Before I get to the how-to’s I’m going to spend some time on the tools. Whether you are the equivalent of a master joiner or a gangly kid in his first woodworking class, you can’t cut wood without a saw, unless you are also a ninja.
Keep reading
31 March 2008
tags: design
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DIY design 2 - attitudes
The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart. —Jesus
What you design will be no better than what is inside you. Here are five attitudes that are very useful to you whether you are a world-famous graphic designer or an absolute DIY design beginner.
I am a learner. Why not put everything you know about making stuff up for grabs? I’ve found that pretending to know nothing serves me far better than pretending to know a lot. Ask lots of questions. Be grateful for the answers, even the ones that point out where you got it wrong – especially the ones that point out where you got it wrong.
I fail fearlessly. Why wait for me to write this whole series before you try something new? Take what you know and give it a twist. Do it backwards or in orange or on video or by hand or only with pictures or without any pictures. What’s the worst that can happen? Probably a hundred people will wonder what you were on about and the universe will carry on as normal. Remember Edison’s 10,000 light bulbs that didn’t work. There is always a chance you will succeed wildly.
I want to be effective, not cool. The point of the things you make is to communicate, not to look good. Make things that connect with your audience, not things that show off your cleverness. Strive for unselfconsciousness. The difference between the things most churches (and small businesses) produce and the things that Look Really Cool is the difference between crap and shiny crap. You don’t want either, and your message deserves better.
I serve the mission. Well-designed communication is a powerful tool to help you move your church and community where you want to go. But make sure that what you design is serving your direction instead of trying to set it. Forcing an image or clever visual onto a mission that it doesn’t fit is selfish and unhelpful. It gets you no where.
I have fun!
(If you don’t think you can have these five attitudes, it is probably a good idea to delegate your church’s design responsibilities to someone else.)
27 March 2008
tags: design
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DIY design 1 - introduction
This is the start of a series of articles about practical things that will be useful to people in small creative churches (and sometimes business).
For those of you who don’t know, I am not just one of the pastors at my church, I am also a *world-famous graphic designer.
See the holy light of creativity shining from my mind? That’s why I’m world-famous.
If your church is anything like mine, you produce all or almost all of your leaflets, posters, handouts, ads, etc. in house. But, unlike my church, your’s probably doesn’t have a world-famous graphic designer to design all those pieces of communication. That’s why I am writing this series.
I am here to Save The Day.
At no charge to you.
In less than 600 steps I am going to help you create effective communications materials for your church (or small business).
For Free.
You should tell everyone you know who does a bit of DIY design for their church or business about this series. They may find it Very Useful. Before you decide not to tell anyone, please consider this true story: A man in County Cork Ireland didn’t email anyone about an article I wrote. He died three days later.**
*I live in Wales and my mother in Tucson, Arizona is very proud of me.
**It is probably illegal for me not to tell you that the man’s death was very likely not connected to my article. He didn’t know I had written it. But still…
26 March 2008
tags: design
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Happy Valentine's Day
I haven’t posted this until now because I wanted some time to pass after the week when super designer Marian Bantjes gave a more creative valentine to me (and all her other clients) than I gave to my beloved wife.
In early February one of Marian’s Trademark translucent envelopes came through the door. It contained eight little pink squares. After a bit Christine figured out what they spelled:
Keep reading
9 March 2008
tags: design,
holidays
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Grids
In which I neatly jump from graphic designers’ grid systems to the internet’s most famous archdruid to the historian Arnold Toynbee to a church in North Carolina to the bible to you.
Image borrowed from Mark Boulton’s grid systems design tutorial
Graphic designers use grids…
Keep reading
14 February 2008
tags: church,
design,
john michael greer,
leadership
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