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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Design a Coffee Cup Icon in Illustrator

Yesterday I wrote an article about a logo I created for a new ministry at our church. I wanted to create a step-by-step tutorial to show you how I created the coffee icon for the logo. If you have the Adobe Creative Suite, Illustrator is the program we will be using. A general rule of thumb, in case you are not familiar with it, is that InDesign is reserved for page layout, Photoshop for image editing, and Illustrator for logos and designs. If you have not dabbled much with Illustrator, take heart, because neither have I. If you have a basic grasp of InDesign, Illustrator should come easy. Start by opening and a new document and making it 10 inches by 10 inches. The first step is just to create a circle. So take the Circle tool and hold...

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SNAC Shop Logo

The latest design opportunity that I have had was to work on a few logos for our church. I hope that these logos will provide inspiration for you. I will also walk you through the steps I went through to create the logo. I will feature more of the logos that I created in the days to come. We'll start off with just one today. The first logo is for an upcoming event, the SNAC Shop. SNAC stands for Sunday Night After Church. The SNAC Shop will provide coffee and snacks after the evening service in the fellowship hall to promote church fellowship and raise money for the youth group. Here is the finished product: To begin. I searched the internet for various church logos to get ideas. Unless you've got an amazingly creative...

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