Effective Church Communications

Game changer! The loss of comprehension of cursive—what it means to church communicators and what to do about it—Canva video included

24 September, 2022 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Contrast between cursive and block lettering — Many people today have trouble reading the cursive scripts in either print or handwriting. We need to be aware of this and design accordingly in our church communications if we want to reach the most people possible.

This is incredibly important for you to understand before you do ANY more outreach advertising, encouragements, or communications creation of any kind, if you want the the maximum number of people in your church and community to be able to read them.

The reason for my urgent message is the realization that many people today cannot read cursive writing and that includes ALL the wonderful script fonts we like to use so much in our designs for church communications. That includes the group of templates I had ready to send out to you that I need to update. (Sigh.)

This is not a happy post for me to write. I don't like change any more than the average person and to have to change something as basic and natural to me as writing cursive and using wonderful script fonts in communication design just seems like a bit much to deal with.

When I am feeling grumpy like this I remind myself that the communication I do isn't about me, but about a world that needs Jesus and NOTHING should be too much to do, little or big if it can help us reach them. So I slap myself, ask for forgiveness and write a blog about it......

First I'll give you a little background on how I became aware of the loss of the ability to read cursive and then some very practical steps on what to do about it, plus a short Canva Tutorial on some creative ways to deal with this situation on a Fall Outreach Postcard.

It is later in the post, keep reading first for more background on this situation.

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Changes in image usage—the “free” sites may not be what they seem and what you need to do about it

30 May, 2020 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

What to do when disappointed with image usage rules — What it feels like when you are excited about images you think you can use and then you find out the rules changed and you can't. What do about it is what this article is about.

Sometimes it is hard to do the right thing, but as disciples of Jesus, we must try.

As I’ve been working on getting lots of material ready for launching the Bibleverse collection of related ministries some guidelines have come to my attention about the “free images” on sites such as Canva, PicMonkey, and Snappa, where you can use the images they have, plus the free images sites themselves such as Unsplash, Pixabay, Pexels, and that many of us (me included) use to create social media and templates. What follows does not apply to sites in which you pay for a membership. But since many churches and organizations make use of free sites, it's important you understand the changing rules.

The take-away conclusions from my research and limitations to the use of "free" images

I won’t bore you with listing the number of articles I’ve read recently, but following is the distilled research and application takeaways both for how it applies to you as a church and how you use things and for the Effective Church Communications ministry.

Overall, as a church creating communications that you freely give to church members and that are primarily shared within your church, you have much more latitude than I do in Effective Church Communications. What I create falls into the “commercial” area and the usage guidelines for that are much more limiting than your non-commercial uses in the church. I have changed many things I charged for in the past to free when I wasn't sure exactly of what drifted into the commercial area.

I'll summarize my bottom-line recommendations shortly and then give you details from various sites.

However, and this is a big, However—if your church does something as seemingly innocent as selling a t-shirt for camp, or a cookbook as a fundraiser or selling anything else, you are now in the commercial category also. Sadly, there are some professional groups (Getty Images has a reputation in this area) that love to go after churches if they feel their image rights are violated. For these reasons, in addition to keeping you informed as to why I do what I do for you, you need to be as careful as possible in your communication creations and in the media you use for them. [Read more...]

How to change the colors of artwork in Canva

10 February, 2020 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Canva is an incredible program and though I've used it for years, I continuously discover new things about it. In this short video, I'll share how to change not only big blocks of color (which is obvious and easy) but how to change even small parts of images in the program. Lots of great options for your designs—check it out!

Canva’s remove background tool–absolutely WONDERFUL!

9 February, 2020 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

This is the greatest tool ever to help in creating church communications! If you have ever tried to remove background around an image, you know how difficult it can be.

With Canva it is almost magically easy and then you can export the image to use in any program you want.

I had heard about the tool, but I didn't get around to using it until one Sunday morning my pastor (now sort of retired, but still preaching at times) HAD to have a flyer for a service he was doing later that afternoon. The video below shows how Canva came to the rescue to help me create what I needed.

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The take-away conclusions from my research and limitations to the use of "free" images

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One quick reminder, Effective Church Communications does not take any affiliate advertising—I'm telling you about this because I personally love and use it all the time.

More videos about Snappa, click on the link below the title

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