Effective Church Communications

Effective Church Communications provides Timeless Strategy and Biblical Inspiration to help churches create communications that fully fulfill the Great Commission

Effective Church Communications provides Timeless Strategy and a Biblical Perspective to help churches create communications that fully fulfill the Great Commission. Our tools constantly change; our task doesn’t; we can help.
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The Power of Infographics and an example of a useful one for Bible Teaching

13 July, 2012 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Best_Time_To_Post
This infographic illustrates the best time to post social media.

Infographics are those great images that help explain complex topics by using images, or as one definition put it:

"infographics turn data into information"

This quote comes from the site Cool Infograhics a (http://www.coolinfographics.com/) and it summarizes how useful these images can be. Infographics go beyond illustrating or decorating; they communicate by their combination of words, pictures and symbols.

I wanted to talk about this, first to provide a resource for learning about them and second, to share a useful one for Bible teaching that illustrates the number of New Testament manuscripts in comparison to other ancient documents.

Learn about Info Graphics from: Cool Infographics

If you want to learn about infographics, this site is one of the best resources. It not only features interesting infographics, but the commentary about each of them helps you understand what works and what doesn't.

Cool Infographics: http://www.coolinfographics.com/

Not as much training, but lots of ideas at: DailyInfographic

As its name says this site has a different graphic everyday on a huge variety of topics. Below is a link to one that talks about colors and branding. Though article doesn't mention churches, the color theory illustrated is very helpful:

"True Colors, Branded Colors" from Daily Infographic: http://dailyinfographic.com/true-colors-branded-colors-infographic

In addition to the article about colors, scroll through the site to find the infographic above on when is the best time to post social media.

Teaching infographic—number of NT manuscripts

Below is a great info graphic about the number of New Testament manuscripts as compared to the manuscript evidence for classical documents. For those who teach about the Bible, it's a useful resource. Below the image is the link to go to for it:

Bible info graphic
A great example of an infographic for Bible teaching. The large circle represents the number of New Testament documents in contrast with the small number of other ones from ancient writers.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2769387572471&set=p.2769387572471&type=1&theater

Unless you have lots of time—creating your own infographics may not be something you want to do, but on the web there are so many useful ones. Take a few minutes and check out the links—you'll learn lots.

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Filed Under: Church Office Skills, Design, Graphics, Images, Social networking, Twitter, Facebook, etc. Tagged With: infographics, infographics for churches, useful infographic sites

Don’t let the need for custom graphics keep you from creating your website–do them with MS Publisher!

25 April, 2012 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Create your own website header with MS Publisher--it's easier than you think!
Create your own website header with MS Publisher--it's easier than you think!

You may be considering creating the website for your church or for a personal blog with WordPress, which is a great idea and one I strongly recommend. But though WordPress is a very easy way to create a website, you may be concerned about how to create the custom header nameplate and maybe some custom graphics for special events.

You have a reason to be concerned because many people will tell you that you need to create these in programs like Photoshop, but your church doesn't have money for the program and you have no time or desire to learn it. But did you know that you can create headers and custom graphics with MS Publisher? Really. You can. And it is SUPER easy to do. [Read more...]

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Filed Under: Design, Graphics, Images, Multi-media, Website Creation Tagged With: Church Websites, create website headers, custom website graphics, easy website graphics, website creation

Why it is incorrect to think that graphic images mean the same thing to everyone who sees them

10 December, 2010 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Images should be used only if they add to the message expressed primarily in words. They are not sufficient in and of themselves to communicate much of anything. They may look nice, they may create an emotion, designers may congratulate each other on their brilliance when they share their creations, but if you want to communicate a significant Christian message, images alone won’t do it.

Some of you may object: “But, a picture is worth a thousand words.”

Whenever I hear that statement, I always respond with the question, “What thousand?”

People often make the first statement as some sort of understood truth that images say more than words do. That is simply not true. Reality is that the same picture can mean as many different things to as many people who look at it. Not convinced?

What would you say a picture of the American flag means to:

  • A Marine just out of boot-camp?
  • A terrorist who has been water-boarded?
  • An immigrant just granted political amnesty?
  • An Al Qaeda sleeper cell member?
  • A member of Congress?

It’s the same flag—but we all bring different histories, experiences, loves, and hates to any image from flags to puppies to clowns. No image, picture, or graphic is self-explanatory.

Testing that backs up the statements above

Gerry McGovern, communications writer and expert has written a blog entry, which I have quoted below, in which he details marketing research that shows the ineffectiveness of images to communicate a message. Mr. McGovern is kind enough to allow reprinting of his material and I strongly recommend you visit his site and sign up for his newsletter. Information on how to find out more about Mr. McGovern’s website and articles are at the end of this article.

ARE MARKETING IMAGES DAMAGING YOUR BRAND?

By Gerry McGovern

On the Web, traditional marketing images are increasingly being seen as useless annoyances by customers. They undermine the credibility of the brand.

The two webpages were trying to get you to sign up for test drives for supercars. They were identical (pictures of the cars, video, etc.) except for different headlines:
LIFE IS SHORT. JUST DRIVE
DRIVE FIVE SUPERCARS. THE US SUPERCAR TOUR

One headline convinced 34 percent more visitors to fill out and submit the lead generation form. “We think headlines can be the most influential element on the page, and this test certainly shows that,” the WhichTestWon website stated. “WhichTestWon.com research shows headline tests are one of the easiest ways to raise your site’s conversion rates,” Ann Holland founder of WhichTestWon states. “Subhead tests and response device headlines (such as wording on a button or at the top of a form) are also extremely powerful.”

Words are absolutely critical to the success of a website and yet many marketers, communicators and senior managers spend far more time on images.

“My group must continually respond to requests to add yet another image to our home page,” Cliff Tyllick wrote to me in an email recently. Cliff is the Web development coordinator for the Agency Communications Division of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Cliff went on to state that they had done a large study of their homepage’s usability which “showed quite clearly that images not only divert attention from themselves ("This looks like an ad. I'm not here to buy anything; I'm here to get something done.") but also poisoned the drawing power of words at or below their level on our home page ("This looks like fluff, so nothing beside or below it could possibly be serious. I'm looking for serious content.").

One participant in the study Cliff’s team conducted visited the website every day and complained that it was impossible to find information on a particular program. For the previous six months there had been a large graphic on the homepage advertising this very program.

In another website we were involved with there was a graphic advertising a service in the right column of the homepage immediately visible. The homepage was long and three screens down there was a text link for this service. The link got several times more clicks than the graphic ad. In another study we did most participants never even saw the banner ad that took up 40% of the homepage because they had clicked on a navigation link before it had time to fully download. Yahoo did a major study on banner ad effectiveness and found that while these ads had some impact on those over 40, those younger than 40 hardly ever saw them.

If these stock photography marketing cliché images are actually damaging to a brand’s reputation, why do we keep using them? There was an Irish family that had a tradition of cutting the roast in two every Christmas. One of the children wanted to know why but nobody could tell her. It was a tradition going back generations, she was told. Finally, the child asked her grandmother. “When I was young, sweetheart,” the grandmother said, “we had a very small oven.”

Citations and ways to contact and sign up for Gerry McGovern’s emails:

www.gerrymcgovern.com


Closing comments from Yvon Prehn:

Images do not fully communicate the complexity of the Christian message. Images do not give time, date, location, and let you know if child care is provided. Images can stir up emotions, but they don’t make practical connections.

We need words. Let’s choose them as carefully as we do our images.

 

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Filed Under: Clipart, Design, Graphics, Images, Photos Tagged With: Gerry McGovern, image use, value of images, words necessary

Clipart, images, articles-if it’s on the web is it OK to use it?

9 August, 2010 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Copyright questions answered
You can find and copy any image on the web, but that does not mean you can use it. Copyright guidelines for what is right for church communicators follow.

 

Google can find anything you want—an image, a devotion, an article, a sermon. One click and you can view it; copy and paste and you capture it. But just because it’s that easy to do it, does that mean you should do it? If we want our digital lives to match the beliefs of our analog lives, as believers and servants of Jesus, the answer is no. We need to be just as careful today that we are not using something that does not rightly belong to us, just as we did in junior high school when we were taught not to plagiarise material for school papers.

To help us do that, a review of what constitutes copyright, fair use, public domain and the newer Creative Commons designations is essential. Following this brief overview and some recommendations is a list of links to the U.S. government sites and other articles that explain these issues in more detail. Yes, this is work and a challenging area that we often do not want to be bothered with—but we work for the King of Kings and Lord of Lord and we need to do all our work as honestly and legally as we know how—no matter how hard it is.

This does not apply to any material you purchase: the images, clipart, articles you may have bought for a yearly or monthly fee.

[Read more...]

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Filed Under: Clipart, Design Tagged With: clipart, Communications, copyright and Churches, free church art, free clip art, free images, free photos, yvon prehn

Picas, a useful way to measure in creating print communications

4 December, 2009 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Picas are an easier measurement to use than inches when doing print communication creation. This PDF shows why.
Picas are an easier measurement to use than inches when doing print communication creation. This PDF shows why.

When you are measuring for print communication creation, it is sometimes difficult to deal with the fractions of inches.

Graphic designers use the pica as the basic measurement because, for one reason, it is a much smaller measure and is easier to work with.

This PDF explains it for you.

The Adobe design programs as well as MS Publisher have the option for you to set your measurements in picas instead of inches. In all of my examples in the PDFs from my basic design book, the "p" measurement refers to picas.

You can buy pica rulers either at art supply stores or online, just Google "pica" and a number of online stores will come up.

To download the PDF, click here or on the image.

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Filed Under: Design Tagged With: Communications, Design, measurement in picas, picas, yvon prehn

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