Graphic Design

This past weekend, I lost it.  Again.  While I’ve been trying to do better at not letting problems during a worship service affect me, I nearly ripped one of our hip sanctuary theater style chairs out of the floor to throw at the screen.  At least that’s what I was thinking in my head.  Anyway, here was my problem:

For weeks, my church has been plagued by worship song lyric slides that are unreadable. 

Like a bad day dream, I saw a black, papyrus style font on a blue-green motion...

Many of you probably saw the same article I did about the legal kerfuffle brewing between Best Buy and a priest over his God Squad car.  The black VW bug wears a logo rip-off giving it the same feel as the now familiar Geek Squad beetles. 

Best Buy sent a cease and desist letter to Father Luke Strand who says he used the car as a ministry tool.

“We were really using the car as a way to bring the Gospel message to the streets…to develop relationships with people and spark conversations with...

I’m not a big conference guy.  For better or worse, I don’t go to a lot of them.  It really comes down to the fact I’m rarely inspired.  But as you can tell from all of the blogging, Echo is different for me.  This is a conference where I felt challenged daily, but I also feel equipped in very practical ways to head home and try to improve my skills.  So thanks to all of the organizers, presenters and attendees at Echo 2010.

As I leave Echo, here are my favorite insights from Dallas.

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Thanks again to all of you who entered our giveaway by telling us your favorite fonts.  In honor of that, here's a collection of random font stuff.  

• Rachel Lorenz is a superstar for telling us about Ecofont.  There are little holes in the font that can't be seen in smaller sizes.  It ends up saving you 25% in toner or ink.  Ecofont Vera Sans is free to download.

• Here's a link to a post we did awhile back giving some of our favorite places to get free fonts.  Plus we outlined some ways not...

I get excited about what LifeChurch.tv is doing. 

That said, I can understand the frustration of many people who are a part of much smaller churches.  They hear the greatness of what big churches are doing and feel like it’s totally impractical for their situation.  I get it, I feel your pain (in my best Bill Clinton voice), and I have the same thoughts many times, too.

But for me, LifeChurch.tv is a big exception.  The way they think and many of the principles they use can be practical for a...

United and Continental Airlines announced this week they plan to merge to create the world's biggest, baddest, fee imposing airline. Not only are the two companies blending into one, so is their logo. They've decided to keep the United name, but use the Continental colors and logo.

Here are a few thoughts on the decision.

Taking old stuff and mixing it into something different doesn’t make a new logo. A logo expresses who you are as an organization. Maybe the only message the new United...

So our web guy, Marc Miller, sent me this video previewing some of the updated features for soon to be released Photoshop CS5. And let me tell you, we've been totally geeked out about it.

For those of you who use Photoshop for picture editing, you're going to appreciate the new "content aware fill" feature. As this video shows, you can do things like take a tree out of a picture and Photoshop will fill in where the tree was with whatever should be in the background, like the sky. Definitely...

As I’ve cruised around the National Religious Broadcasters Convention, I’ve been on the lookout for examples of good marketing or good communications. I have to say, I think the work the NRB has done this year on the graphics and signs for the convention are nice and fit the image of the organization. It’s sort of a multi-depth display where the graphics flow from one poster to the next.

But a conversation one of the nights reminded me that no matter how nice a design is if it doesn’t...

Here are some great links to find free fonts:

• Font Squirrel - A selection of high quality, free commercial use fonts.
• DaFont - Lots of free and shareware fonts.  Make sure to look at the usage information.  Some are okay for commercial use and others are restricted to personal use.
• Urban Fonts - 8,000 plus free and shareware fonts.
• Smashing Magazine - Here are some links to articles about free fonts.  It'll take come clicking, but you'll find them.

If you’re like me, I start twitching with...