JFlah's Blunders

Here's the "final" poster design. Might be tweaked a little more, but this is basically it. Made the angels subtle and the nativity prominent. Thankfully the boss was around when I was working on placement of the pieces. He helped me choose three angels and decided he wanted the nativity big. Here's the inspiration:

Finished late last night. My sister came to help some. Were it not for that, I'd not have completed it. I got in there to start around 2pm and painted till about 8:30pm. I'm thinking it was worth the effort. Turned out cute.

Ok - so we just finalized the logo for the rebranded student ministry here. We nixed the old  name (so no more "Crossover" Student Ministries) and are opting for the simplicity of what people already call it: "The Student Ministry" - I know, not particularly clever but it works and I think it's fine. Didn't sketch much for the design of this one. It's a spin on the main church Z-mark we created at the beginning of this year. Below is the progression and the finalized versions. Took a little while to choose a font then we were off to the races. The colors are going to be in flux as the plan is to simply adapt it to its surroundings each time it's used. Also, when we do shirts we're going to try to focus on keeping the high school's colors in the design so the kids can wear them on spirit day. Final one is circled. Started off with the round versions and ended up going with out the circle. And here's the first layout using the n...

Sermon titles and matching bulletin covers are a weekly task that can often be a fun challenge. That was definitely the case this week. I typically start with the layout that I have to print on the bulletin then adapt the layout to the SD slide format. These are a few from this week's attempts. Ok - so this is the "get the juices flowing" one. Pastor's tag line made me think of this funny little guy. Added the mites falling from his hand and a few shadows and voila - instant silliness. This was the second rendition including one of my favorite fonts . The picture is from here . This is the final rendition. Lots of texture and the mites falling. Ended up with six or seven adjustment levels before I found something that I thought would work. Haven't printed one yet, so might end up with a few more before I'm absolutely done with this. Last week, pastor couldn't bring himself to use what I'd created on screen since it reminded him ...

Am about to launch off into designing yet another logo at work. The women's ministry has gone through a few changes and they're looking for another mark. The group's lead has asked for a heart and a cross. We can go that route, but those images have been done so many times over that they're hard to do with any originality. I hope she will be more interested in the other ideas. I'd prefer to have their new logo be a spin off of the new church mark. Anyhow, here are a few preliminary super rough sketches. Here are some more...

I'm not much for arranging greenery - never have been, but our maintenance guy has a great eye for that kind of thing so he and I put the grasses up and mounted the critters. Now all that's left is to patch where the screws are and paint the words on the fence. Here's the logo again:

Stayed late at work this evening to finally paint the alligator part of that Preschool logo. All credit goes to God, who somehow made each brush stroke work. There were a few moments... ok, lots of moments when I wasn't sure this was going to turn out. Could've probably added more shadow to the left side of the face, but in general, I think it turned out ok and I'm looking forward to seeing it installed. Here is the final and a few progress pictures.

This week's sermon title slide was a lot of fun to put together. Pulled images from several places to make the box work and then I pulled images to create the environment for the box before working on the text and such. Will probably work on the text layout a bit more - am not fully satisfied with the font choice or layout just yet, but it's very close. Started with this image and a title earlier this afternoon: Just a squashed old box photo. Ended with this: This is the "almost" final rendering. Will be working a bit more on the text layout, but the background is pretty much done. Was fun to find the box, choose a pattern for the wrapping paper, warp that paper to fit. Most difficult part was deciding on the color scheme. The most fun was making the bow fit and putting the shadows on there in a believable manner. Not really satisfied with how the box doesn't quite seem grounded on the wood, but it's not so obvious that I am overly concerned about...

Black and white is always classy...   Brown is nice too - it's warm and inviting, but not as flexible in relation to design solutions. Who knew slat board could be so cool? The boss came back from a staff retreat and brought me the idea of using a slat wall as a solution for what I've jokingly called his "wall of faces" (loosely translated: it's a wall of pictures for the worship ministry). The pictures have been taken by one of our church members - a very talented photographer - they'll be grayscaled. If the idea is approved, it's going to be nice when it's done. The above images are two of the many mock ups I've done for this wall idea, and I have to say that I like the slat board idea so much better than any of the other media choices we've explored. It will prove to be the most flexible for future things too. Once the boards are up, it won't be hard to install and remove and rearrange pictures and such at will. Surprisingly...

Finally got the Directory design completed. Went through eight different cover layouts before I settled on one I was comfortable enough with to show the boss. After that, the rest almost designed itself. Something else we finally got around to finishing up were the business cards. We're getting some spot gloss on them, so they should be pretty nice when they're done. I even talked them into having a space on the back dedicated to writing notes. Anyway, after doing all of those it makes me think I need to make myself a business card too. It's been a long time since I had one. Then there's the cutie fuzzy bug we're using for the children's choir musical... We put this on our shirts and on all of the promos. Idea is from a zazzle shirt.

So, yeah, they made a decision. I'm glad we're pretty much done with this project. Sure, I've still got to update everything with the new "modern" look, but at least they've settled on a logo. Lots of other things happening around there - exciting stuffs. No time to chat - too much work to do. Merry Christmas all!

So, yeah - we're re-branding now that the new boss is here. It's past time for this and I'm excited to freshen up the look we've got now. I created the last logo about four/five years ago. They said they wanted something traditional but more corporate looking than the last logo. Here's what I gave them last time:  This time the boss wants something uber modern but he doesn't quite know what he means by that. Every time he sees something else that he likes he wants to scrap the direction we were working in and run in that new direction. It's a challenge - a good challenge - and although I'm not sure I'm up to the task and am unsure if I will be able to provide the kind of logo he wants, I'm enjoying working on it - especially since the media director is handling the new web site stuffs right now.  The plan is to launch everything for the first of the new year - the new logo, the new website, the new slogan/mission statement and focu...

This is a project I've been playing with off and on for about a week. It's a "push card" for the women's ministry. I printed them for the director today and they look great!

Bulletin front for March 16.  I saw this verse designed by someone else and thought I'd do one myself since we didn't get a sermon title on time to make it into the bulletin this week. Made background from several different photographs and a few filters. Enjoyed choosing fonts for this, though the more I worked on it the more I realized I need to start brushing up those skills. Here's another one from a week or two ago: