Fresh Start, Fresh Look

If you haven't heard the latest scoop, Media Missions is back in action....sort of. Since I decided to reboot the blog, I also decided to change the name. The old name was something I started with at the conception of the idea, but as I gained experience, I realized it wasn't as effective as I though it would be. Now, Media Missions was really all about church marketing, from advertising to printing and  social media to powerpoint, more than half of the topics drove home this one essential theme. So it's with no small consideration that I bought a new website and rebranded Media Missions as Church Marketing Pro. The name is quite a bit more universal and provides a clearer focus moving forward. As I'm no web designer, I left the bulk...

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Media Missions Resurgence

I haven't posted on this site for probably a little over two years, but through that time this website still receives 60+ clicks a day and receives comments from readers on posts at least once every 2 months. That's not bad for not one new post in 2 years! With some new life circumstances (my wife's part time job), I find myself alone many nights without much to do. Now is the perfect time to bring back this site and try to push forward the original goal over 3 years ago when this site was started. ...

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Make Today the Best Day

Have you ever been standing at the check-out counter when the your transaction finishes and the cashier says to you "Have a good day!" and your typical response is "You too!"? We all have, it's our habitual response. But do you ever get tired of responding like a robot with hollow words? I mean come on, do you really, sincerely want that person to have a good day? Recently, I was over at a gentleman's house and we were talking about unique ways to share the gospel besides knocking on someone's door. He pulled out his wallet and handed me a card. It said "Thank You! For saying "Have a great day!" and then proceeded to tell the reader why today was a great day. On it was the plan of salvation. Immediately, I thought, "What an awesome idea!"...

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The Hardest Design Lesson to Learn

Design is hard work. There is no question about that. It takes time, skill, and a lot of planning to pull off a great design. So what is the hardest design lesson to learn? Is it choosing that perfect font that communicates your message? Is it selecting the best color scheme that adds that extra flare? Or is it coming up with that creative concept that will blow the competition away? While all of these steps in the design process are important. The hardest lesson for a designer to learn is to listen to the opinions of others. It echoes the age old principle, "The customer is always right." Any designer knows that, to most non-design people, everything you do looks wonderful. In some cases, a customer's idea of a design gives you this strong...

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Top 5 Font Tips for Great Design

I have finally begun to read The Non-Designer's Design & Type Books. I received it a few months ago to critique and have barely touched it. I first looked at it last night. The opening pages discuss what the author calls the "Joshua Tree Epiphany." He tells the story of receiving a tree book for Christmas. Excited about his new book, he opened it, ready to identify the trees in his neighborhood. The first tree was a Joshua tree. He told himself he'd never seen one of those before. As he began identifying the trees in his neighborhood, he realized that 80% of the houses had Joshua trees in the yards. The principle he was making from this story is that you tend not to notice something until you are aware that its there. I pondered this...

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The Cost of Good Design

We just had our annual church business meeting. Immediately, some of you are falling asleep because that's what you do in business meetings, but here me out! In our meeting, and in most meetings, we passed around the church budget. One of the line items was "Advertising/Promotions." We even are starting a "committee" for this. Like it or not Graphic Design has made its mark on the church. Church marketing cannot hope to live without it. So I asked myself this question "How much should a church be willing to spend on their Advertising campaign?" To be perfectly honest with you, I have completely forgotten what number our church had down in the budget for this, but I hope to list many of the costs a church will need to undertake in order...

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Getting the Most from Newspaper Ads

We have talked about advertising in the past. You can check out all the articles by hovering over the "Topics" tab above and clicking Advertising. Or you can just click here for you lazy people. Today I want to get specific. I want to talk about Newspaper advertising. I've had a bit of experience with this working with Murray River Baptist Church and I was recently asked to design an advertisement for a local church, Resurrection Baptist Church of Pensacola, FL. This got me thinking. Why don't I write an article helping others make great newspaper ads? There is a lot that goes into designing and placing an ad in the paper so the following information is a compiled list of everything you should pay attention to get the most out of your...

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How to Print Professionally

Have you ever made a design that you thought was going to be great, but then when you printed the file it came out all pixelated and blurry? Do remember being disappointed because it did not look as sharp as you had hoped it would be? This post seeks to help you avoid the woes of printing. The All Important Rule Any time you design a logo or poster for your church, make sure that the file is large enough for what you want done. Do you want a large 40" x 100" banner showcasing your church building project progress? Don't make the design on an 8.5" x 11" size document. When you go to print, the file will have to scale almost 10x it's original creation size and that will skew your design. Notice the examples below: 4x6 Slide 40x60...

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Vector Vs. Raster

What’s the difference between Raster and Vector? It’s pretty much like the difference between a $5 bill and a $100 bill. Which would you rather have? Obviously you’d want the $100 bill. It’s the same for rasters and vectors. For identity design, a vector is worth ten rasters. When it comes to logos and official church stationary you should never use anything but a vector. Wait. Rewind. What is a vector anyway? A vector is an image that is based upon mathematical equations. It constantly calculates to give you the finest line no matter how far you zoom in. And a raster? A raster image is one based upon pixels. A pixel is a tiny square of color information. Each pixel contains only one color. Thousands and thousands of pixels combined make...

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