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; Effective Church Communications can help.

E-book and PDF for church communicators on paper and printing

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Cover from ebook on paper choices for church communicators
This is a new e-book format I'm testing to make information available to you and those you forward to in a variety of ways.

This post has a dual purpose to share an updated post for you on paper and printing (which I trust has lots of useful content) and to share it in two more formats: an e-book and a PDF.

The reason I'm sharing these formats is that along with the reality that we live in a multi-channel world today where people take in information in a variety of ways, along with that some ways are easier for or preferred by certain people to access. Some like to read on-screen, some like print. Screen size can vary from quite small on our phones to various sizes of tablets and up to what many of us spend our day in front of--a computer screen.

Each of these has a format that is more readable or maybe more preferred than others. In addition, some are easier to share than others. This last point is important because a lot of the information on this site, I trust is useful to share with church communication volunteers or decision-making staff. Because of that I have experimented with various formats and here is what I have and some comments on each one. Below my comments are downloads of the e-book and the PDF:

Reading on-screen: this is quick and easy; probably most of you are initially reading this post this way. One thing I am very happy about and why I selected this website template when I redid the site is that this site reads extremely well on a mobile phone, which may be useful to pass on a link to a staff member who lives on their phone.

PDF print out: some people appreciate a printed page and I recently added the Print Post and Page Plugin to the site that adds a big PRINT button at the bottom of articles. If you hit that, it will create a PDF without all the extra junk on the page that would come up if you just used your printer button. There is a samples of this below. Hit the button and it immediately creates the PDF which can be great for printing off and sharing an article at, for example, a staff meeting.

E-book: sometimes you want to forward something to someone and you want it to look good and be very readable on-screen. This is where an e-book format is useful. I just started using a program that creates them (designrr.io), I'm not totally thrilled with it and have a lot of bugs to work out, but I do really like how easy to read the final product is. This would be a great format to forward to people. If attached to an email, it would download and open nicely for reading. This is also a way for me to aggregate content from related articles which I will be doing for ECC Members in the future.

Below are the samples, if you have time to comment on them, which you like or not or whatever, I'd appreciate your feedback. [Read more...]

SIX TIPS to chose paper wisely for the greatest church communication impact

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Paper choices for church communications
It's easy to get buried with paper choices for your church communications, but this article will help you choose what is most effective.

As we go into the holiday season, many churches are tempted to use colored papers to print brochures, flyers, newsletters and other materials. Lots of orange, brown, green and red paper will be used and though these colors might be appropriate to the season, they may not be the best to get across your message and help people show up to your events. Following are SIX TIPS on paper choice for the holiday season and year round to make for more effective church communications.

#1 Remember Readability

The most important aspect of the paper you use is how well it contributes to the readability of your newsletter or other communication. If people can't read your message nothing else really matters.

People don’t judge a holiday communication based on how fancy the paper is, what color it is or if it is slick or not. What matters is how easy is it to read. If a publication is difficult to read, today’s busy, stressed out readers will simply put it aside and won’t read it.

With these comments in mind, let's look in more detail on:

  • Paper opacity
  • Paper color
  • Publication reproduction method

[Read more...]

For a ministry to the arts in your church and incredible graphic design creativity, check out the RISOGRAPH!

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RISOGRAPH Samples
Images like this show why the RISOGRAPH has become a favorite graphic design tool of artists everywhere.

In a recent newsletter, the AIGA  (the American Institute of Graphic Arts) had a wonderful article about how the RISO is becoming the darling of art schools!

I must admit, I was just astounded by some of the work being done with the humble digital duplicator, but it proves what I have often said that the quality of communications has so much less to do with the latest and greatest technology and has everything to do with the imagination and skills of the person working on it. Artists around the world are doing incredible things with the printers and their low-cost and versatility make it perfect for printing in the church.

Below is the link to the article, and then after that, some quotes from it and then some examples of images on sites that specialize in RISOGRAPH (aka the RISO Digital Duplicator). It really is inspiring! [Read more...]

Video and article: How to create full-color FREE church postcards, business cards and other publications with VistaPrint

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Please note: Videos are at the end of this article. This article is a few years old and the system has changed a little, and they may not have the free offer, but the material following should be useful.

Most of the printed publications we do in the church are done with either the copier or a digital duplicator. Sometimes we use color if we have a good color copier. These machines work for most of the products we create, but sometimes we long for full-color or glossy printing on our church business and invitation cards or church outreach postcards.

Many churches justify the cost of special projects for major holidays, but most wouldn't think of doing a full-color business or invitation card for a Sunday School class, children's or women's ministry event in the church because of the short run and the cost. But you might think about doing it--if the price was FREE. FREE or almost (there are a few little charges I explain later) is what is honestly available through Vista Print. Remember what follows is my experience and opinion, only, not anything from the company, but I trust will be useful to you. What prompted me to do this article and the associated videos is that I wanted to get some full-color, glossy business/invitation cards done for the Sunday School class my husband and I teach. There is no way I could go to my local printer and afford to get that done, but then I got one of the special discount emails from Vista Print. As I was putting together my order, I realized I could share it with all of you.

About Vista Print

Vista Print (www.vistaprint.com) is an online printing company. There are a number of them out there today and many churches use them successfully to create high quality print items at a low-cost. They are in NO WAY a substitute for your copier or digital duplicator, but when you want 100 business cards or a vinyl banner or a couple of full-color yard signs they are great.

Vista Print has been around a long time and they do a reliable job. I've used them for church and business jobs and have been happy with all the results.

You don't have to use Photoshop to get professional results!

Many of the online print companies (Vista Print does this also) recommend that you use Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator to create your products.  At  first look, it seems like if you don't use these products you won't get quality results. But that is not true! As the video below will show you can easily create a publication using MS Publisher that is extremely simple to load up and have created with Vista Print--and the results are great! [Read more...]