Anybody out there?

Sorry there's been so little action on design4church. With the release of google's new iPhone blogger app, I may start posting again. Here's a quickie. The new Letter M Press app for iPad simulates a wood type press. Screen grabs make nice title-art on their own...

Try a new view!

Blogger has just enabled a bunch of new views. Try clicking http://design4church.blogspot.com/view/mosaic for a fresh appreciation of the design4church archives. Other views are available from a drop down list.

The Word is worth a thousand pictures...

Andrew Clarke from St David's Presbyterian Church Toowoomba has been quietly pumping out some top quality pre-sermon advertising images. They're all good, and well designed for a more traditional style church. Here's one of my faves...

Promoting Jesus

Here at MPC we're working on a campaign for 2010 called "Promoting Jesus." We've been looking for a simple and engaging logo, and with Matt Allan's help, we think we've found it. Thanks Matt!

Design Showcase

More great work from Queensland, this time from Mike O'Connor in Rockhampton, who is trying to decide between two potential designs for the upcoming Central Queensland Christian Convention. Feel free to express your preference in the comments...

Design Showcase

Some nice design examples are finding their way to my inbox. This one from Matt Allan at Freshchurch, Queensland, advertises Garnet Swann's cheeky sermon series "Why I am NOT a Christian."

Christmas Already?

"I was quite pleased with this little flyer to promote our family service," says Stuart Atkinson from Brisbane's Wilston Presbyterian Church. "I initually thought - Christmas - that means lots of colour doesn't it? And although we could probably add some colour here, the little bits of reddy/pink actually stand out more when you're not overloaded. I was most pleased with the amount of depth I could get by resizing the star and using shadows. Interested in comments - I think I've probably broken every layout rule here, as basically nothing lines up, and the kiddy photo probably could have used some treatment. I just wanted to let people know as well about the rihac conitnuous ink supply system which I've been testing. It's basically a system that connects reservoir bottles to your inkjet printer, which massively reduces your costs. It's particularly useful with flyers like this. These days the inkets do a particularly good quality prints, especially on glossy paper, and If you just want to do a small run (a hundred or so) flyers for distribution within church, it's handy, as commercial printer companies don't really cater for this. Here's the site http://www.rihac.com.au/"

Stu also wonders where you can get a good range of papers for this kind of printing? He says it seems easy to get the very heavy 230gsm glossy photo paper, but it's harder to get the 130-170gsm stuff which seems to work better for flyers - particularly double sided gloss/semi gloss paper. Any tips?

More fonts for free...

Titillium is a clean looking, free font family with a useful range of weights. Download the family here or drop by the Campivisivi website for a closer look. Maybe useful for a full corporate makeover. It looks much more promising here than in my previous post (below.)

The value of Aesthetics

Thanks to Wayne Connor and Bryson Smith for this insightful article on why aesthetics matter...
"We’ve all seen arguments in the design community that dismiss the role of beauty in visual interfaces, insisting that good designers base their choices strictly on matters of branding or basic design principles. Lost in these discussions is an understanding of the powerful role aesthetics play in shaping how we come to know, feel, and respond..." Read more at http://www.alistapart.com/articles/indefenseofeyecandy/