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.

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

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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.

[Read more...]

Free Islamic-looking (English letters) font for Ramadan publications or other times it might be appropriate

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Ramadan alone--share a kind note
I don't know the challenges of celebrating Ramadan alone, but we can acknowledge that we care to our Muslim friends.

Current note April 2020: it is currently the time of Ramadan for our Muslim neighbors and it is an especially challenging time because of the intensely social nature of Ramadan and the current restrictions because of the social distancing requirements many are wanting to follow. A kind note to a Muslim friend might be appropriate. I recently received an email from a Muslim friend and though I honestly didn't know what to say, I wanted them to know that I was acknowledging the challenges they were facing—it was meant as a gentle virtual hug and I hope accepted that way.

You don't have to use the fonts below to write the note, but in case you want to use them at some time for a related topic, this seemed like a good time to share this again.

Past post:

Whether it is for the month of Ramadan or any time that you want to create communications about the Muslim religion, a font that has an Islamic look while still using English letters, is useful. Below is a very short video that shows the website for a variety of useful Islamic looking fonts and below it is the link to the site.

Here is the link to the fonts:

Islamic looking fonts--for free downloads of fonts:
http://www.dafont.com/theme.php?cat=202

Do check out the site for other fonts that look interesting--there are a lot of them.

Video of how to download them:

 

 

Islamic looking fonts--for free downloads of fonts:
http://www.dafont.com/theme.php?cat=202

 

Typesetting for kid’s communications

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PDF of Typesetting for Kids publicationsCreating communications for children can be lots of fun, especially with the fun typefaces you can use.

This PDF gives you some guidelines to make your use of them more effective. Though it has some useful tips, the companies cited are no longer in business, but http://www.fontspace.com/ is and below are some of their current fonts that are great for children:

All the fonts above are from:  http://www.fontspace.com/ and are free downloads.

Google fonts also has a great selection of free fonts

One very important guideline to keep in mind is to NEVER use the typefaces that have reversed letters (such as a reversed "e" or "s"). It might seem like that would be a harmless, cute thing to do, but when little children receive a printed piece from a respected person in the church and the penmanship is all wrong, it can be confusing.

Have fun, do kid-friendly things, but always remember the position of authority and influence you have in young lives.

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

note: this PDF is from Yvon Prehn's archives and is the only format of this article available presently. Not the greatest quality to be sure, but shared with the belief that the content is useful.

It’s not about your creativity, it’s about serving your congregation with your church bulletin

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Letters need to be organized to communicate.
Letters don't mean anything until your organize them into clear, consistent communications.

Though the church communicator emailing me was asking about another topic, in passing she mentioned that she was going to be taking over the production of the church bulletin and was looking forward to changing it every week so she could express her creativity through it.

Her excitement about the new project and a wish to be creative was commendable, but it isn't a good idea to change the format of the church bulletin (or any other church communication) on a weekly or any other frequent basis and here's why:

People don't read the bulletin because they are looking for creative inspiration, they read it for information.

People access information by means of the structure you give them in your communications. The structure of your bulletin consists of the layout, the type and illustrations that you use, plus how you organize material into sections.

You want to come up with a clear system of how you use these structural tools so that people will not be conscious of the building blocks of your system, but will be able to easily access the information.

Type is one of the most important building blocks. On your church newsletter or bulletin, if someone says, "that was an interesting typeface," it isn't a compliment.

Did you notice the typeface on any blog you read regularly, on Facebook, or your local newspaper? You don't because you should always see through the typeface to the content. If people notice the typeface it can be a distraction to your message. [Read more...]

Video and notes: Tips for using COLOR in text

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Video: Tips for using COLOR in text
This video will help you make sure that your colored text not only looks good but is readable.

We might like how a color looks in an illustration, but the same color that might make a design appealing, might also make the message unreadable if we use that color in text. This short video will give you tips on how to use color in the text of your communications. The text is the most important part of any communication because that is the primary carrier of your message. It doesn't matter how pretty or inspiring an illustration is if people don't come to the event or learn what you want them to. [Read more...]