Storytelling through design

Good design will tell a story. This is one of the most critical aspects of visual design. Stories help your audience remember what is being communicated. Think back to your own life, do you remember math lectures from high school where your teacher just dumped a bunch of information on you and expected you to memorize and regurgitate it back? Can you remember a story your mom has ever told you from her childhood? The ancient tribal cultures had something figured out well, that we should take heed from today, one of the most important aspects of their culture was passing down stories from generation to generation. 

Stories inspire, create meaning and allow for a connection to be made between yourself and the designer and the audience you seek to reach. When designers engage story, communication truly becomes effective.

How would design change in your church context if every piece of design had a specific story to tell? How can your design tell the story of Christianity? How can your design tell the story of life change in your congregation? Next time you set out to design something, first ask yourself what story you need to tell and let that become your foundation for your design. 

Defining the Visual Culture

When a picture or object is used as an illustration, find the object or a picture of the object to show, rather than describe the object with words.

Thinking through this in another way, I would argue, if any concept can be shown through a picture, you should show your audience a picture rather than explaining a difficult concept.

For example, even such common concepts as telling your congregation about a location  Paul was traveling to in the Bible, rather than attempt to describe the location with references that may not be clear, simplify your message and show them a map of his route.

Visual culture is way in which the public interacts with the visual world around them. The artists that create visual culture are not always designated as artists. In the 21st Century there are fluid boundaries between the artist and public that create the visual culture. Phone cameras and consumer photo and video editing software have made design accessible to the masses. This is a frequently discussed phenomena in today’s culture, and worth mentioning again, because it influences the visual culture around each of us everyday. 

The good news about the increasingly routine nature of design is the ability of the everyday person to take notice of design and appreciate good design. With a plethora of bad design vying for attention, simple, clean and well planned design has great potential to be seen and confronted in a meaningful way.

Video- Part Three

This is part three of video basics, where we are discussing some ways to incorporate video into your communications strategy. In part one we got the 30,000 foot view of video production, and part two we discussed some ways to find your target audience. Today we are going to move forward and figure out how to use different styles of video within your services.

Know your purpose

Once you’ve got your target audience nailed down, think through what that says about the primary purpose video plays in the life of your audience. Does your audience love humorous videos? Does your group connect with more serious TV shows that cause them to reflect on their lives? Do they connect with sarcasm? Should you avoid nerd humor at all cost? You probably have some idea of this from the types of jokes, or lack thereof your pastor has incorporated into his sermons. Your audience is not going to appreciate a video that is full of dry humor, if your pastor always gets comment cards about that joke that is full of dry humor. Keep this in mind when brainstorming video content.

Please make sure you have a purpose for each video you use, and make that purpose clear to the audience or it may distract from the message you are trying to get across during your service. I am helping launch a church right now on the Eastside of Seattle, I along with the launch team spent this past winter church hopping and becoming visitors at churches to research new ideas and start relationships with the other churches in the area. I remember during one service, they played a really funny video as an intro to the sermon, I remember the video clear as day, it had a great story, it was hilarious and it connected with the culture of the area. What I don’t remember, is anything about the sermon or the rest of the service, I was so distracted by waiting for the tie-in to this video and trying to fit it together with each point in the message. The pastor never mentioned the video, the topic of the sermon had nothing to do with the video and it left me feeling like it was just random. Now, I will say in defense of this church, I know their strategy, and the sole purpose of the video may have just been to get everyone to relax before the message, they want to communicate that church can be fun. This is a great purpose for video, but my suggestion for those types of videos is to still acknowledge them or have it tie in with an element of your service, so it doesn’t feel out of place. All it needed was for the pastor to say “good morning, if you are new here, that video was for you, we want to make sure you know church people can pull off a good prank too!” This would be reinforcing the purpose to the audience and they can laugh, then move on and focus on the rest of service.

Remember the purpose doesn’t have to always be deep and spiritual! In fact, some of the most memorable videos I have seen, added a bit of humor to an otherwise heavy morning. Don’t be scared of lighthearted  or funny videos, just make sure you have a purpose, and you are communicating that purpose to the audience.

Video- Part Two

This is part two of video basics, where we are discussing some ways to incorporate video into your communications strategy. In part one we got the 30,000 foot view of video production, today we are going to start with some practical tasks to get you on your way to using video.

I was recently at the Seattle Museum of Flight to help with a prestigious award celebration event. A local news station was brought in to handle all the video production. This wasn’t a super hard event, three cameras for IMAG and a laptop feed for one video playback. Every former Museum of Flight chairman was present, along with a host of other current and former Boeing top executives and some various other large corporate CEO’s. During the event, most of the camera shots were out of focus and the shading was rough and different on almost every shot. If I had seen this event on TV, I would have been joking with my family that some video director was never going to be able to find a job again. Yet, much to my surprise... I didn’t hear one complaint the entire night, and no one got fired. In fact, that same production team will be back to help support their annual gala in a few months. What I want to point out about this experience, your audience matters. My best guess as to why there were no complaints about this event, most the audience was older than 60, and a good percent was in the 75+ category. This generation was there to see a good friend honored and to celebrate, they simply did not care about what was happening on screen.

Know your target audience

I hope you already have a target in mind with all your communications, do you know the demographic you are trying to reach with each service? Don’t lose sight of that target audience when adding video content to services. Video is not a one-size-fits-all medium, it is going to take intentional thought to hit your audience appropriately. Watch commercials, yep I said it, spend a week intentionally paying attention to all advertisements you see. Ask yourself what the target audience for the ad might be. Get on Facebook or Twitter and pay attention to the Youtube or Vimeo videos ( or lack thereof) that your congregation members post and tweet, this will tell you a lot about the style that is connecting with your community. Learn all about the TV shows that your church members enjoy, do they watch Modern Family? The Office? NCIS L.A? These shows all have very different style techniques and senses of humor. Spending the time to research what video already reaches your audience will help you save time, energy and a lot of awkward moments when it comes to adding video elements to your services.

When figuring out the style of your crowd, always remember that your personal style may not match with the majority of your audience. Don’t be scared if you find this rings true, I am not usually creating content in my own preferred style when I’m creating for church. It may be a challenge at first but you can overcome your own style to create for your crowd. Put together a dream team to help you come up with ideas and storyboards, get others involved and ask for help from your team if you are unsure about a certain idea.

Video- Part One

So you may have heard a lot about video being incorporated into every aspect of church services recently, and you might be intrigued by trying it out for your church, but where do you start? How do you integrate video into your communications strategy? Why should you add video content to your website and church services?

Even if your church is conservative and traditional video can can be a great communication tool. Video is not just for “those young kids” this medium can speak volumes to the human soul in ways like no other art medium. My hope is that in the next several weeks you can get some ideas and helpful tips for incorporating video into your services, and be inspired to try something new.

Maybe you recognize the need for video, but you don’t have time or energy to do one more thing, or maybe you are just starting to think about the possibilities, great! No matter where you are on the spectrum I hope you are able to take some steps forward in the next couple months. Video can be scary at first, but it can also be a great tool to communicating messages in a fresh way. 

Be brave, you can do it, and I am here to help you out. Over the next few posts I will be tackling all the video basics, from strategy to execution and giving you some resources to check out along the way. Use them, don’t use them, steal techniques and ideas and put your own spin on it. The resources are just a tool in your arsenal to help you out, figure out how each resource can be best served for your application and start running.

You made it through part one, that wasn’t too bad was it? Up next in our series we will discuss our foundation for building a video communications strategy.

Form Follows Function

Form Follows Function - 

White Space is not Your Enemy, by Kim Golombisky & Rebecca Hagen mentions that in design, form always follows function. This is a principle that suggests, graphic designers do not have the luxury of doing design work for the sake of art. That job is left to the fine artists. Designer must be practical in their expression of art.

How does this translate to worship design? Even in the church, design should always be functional first and foremost. This means, if you are a traditional church, do not use grungy fonts and big bold neon colors for the sake of attempting to fit in. Be true to your own church congregation and remember the functionality of the design work you place in front of them. If the design hinders communication, it is not an appropriate design. 

One way to help get yourself started on a path towards functional design, go to a grocery store and find five food labels that catch your attention, and five labels that you had to work hard to see the product. Then analyze the design tactics used in these labels to help them grab your attention. The grocery store is one of the most visually overloaded spaces, and good designers must catch the attention of their audience amidst thousands of other visual stimulus. Begin to use some of the ideas you find on the good eye caching products in order to boost your own design. 

K.I.S.S

Author Garr Reynolds in Presentation Zen Design discusses the principle of simplicity. I think this is often one of the most overlooked design principles even in my own work. I spend so much time focusing on what to add, where to put flourishes, and I often forget the power of white space and simplicity. One of the other books I am diving into this semester is White Space is Not Your Enemy by Kim Golombisky. The title itself is a great reminder to keep it simple. Reynolds talks about Wagasa, a traditional Japanese umbrella, at the end of the day, these umbrellas are not ornately detailed, but rather fairly basic and simple. The process on the other hand, is very complex, and requires great skill. Often times in design, the process of being simple is anything but simple.

In church communications, I think it is easy to let the design overwhelm the message. In commercial marketing and advertising, often times the message IS better than the product and it can be an honest goal to make a cool or hip commercial. I have to remind myself often, in the church the design should always help communicate the message, not stand out on its own.

In some ways this makes the job of the church communicator even more difficult. How do we honor our craft and our design skills without allowing them to take stage over the ultimate message of Jesus?