GCI is the family of churches to which my own home church belongs. Even that term “family of churches” is an intentional descriptor that we created to differentiate GCI from denominations. GCI is a group of churches, U.S. military chaplains and affiliated ministries that just like hanging out together. We encourage each other, help each other through difficult times, and try to be family for each other. My job was to take the very corporate-looking website we created in 2008 and rebuild a new site that matched the new brand identity for GCI. A lot can change in 3 years, and that was certainly the case with GCI. The 2008 site was commissioned to be professional, corporate, lofty, complex and business-like. Since then, the idea of “family” has grown to be the predominant direction of GCI, and the 2008 design brief became tremendously outdated.

I began by interviewing and consulting the GCI decision-makers on what makes GCI unique. What are the values and goals of GCI — what separates them from other church networks? What is the corporate culture of GCI? What do they want the experience of member churches to be? These questions and others were what I used to ascertain what the message of the new brand was to be.  They didn’t want to change their logo, but instead wanted to a new website that would represent who they are.

I followed up the consulting with a survey, sent out to a representation of people who use the GCI website — member churches’ leaders and staff, GCI admin staff who would use the backend, and normal people who would go to the site to see what’s new in the GCI network. I combined the results of that survey with the goals of the GCI leadership and began to craft a design that would “say” all of that.

The site is built on WordPress for easy management, and I have created training videos to enable the GCI office staff to maintain the site. I also provided internet consulting services to the staff.

Click to visit the GCI website.

So, at the risk of irritating other designers, I’m going to give you guys some tips for how to step into Do It Yourself Design on a tight budget. There are “industry secrets” that can help you keep costs low but still create decent design. Obviously there is no substitute for a real designer. We’re trained by professionals, we have valuable experience, and we live & breathe this stuff. Ultimately, a professional designer will always produce better designs than a design hobbyist.

OK, enough of the caveats. On to the DIY Design Tools…

Typography

Let’s start with typography. Every design that involves letters should start with type choice.

By the way, the difference between a font and a typeface is this: typeface: the design of the letterforms (a.k.a. “glyphs”). font: the package the letterforms com in. Example: on a musical album, the songs themselves (chord structures, lyrics, melodies, harmonies) are the typeface. The CD or Record itself is the font.

1. Do not use Comic Sans.
2. Do not use Papyrus.
3. Do not use Times New Roman.
4. For printing, if you want to use Arial, don’t. Use Helvetica instead. The only time you should use Arial is on the internet. Besides, Arial is Microsoft’s lame attempt to copy Helvetica.
5. If you’re using Coolvetica, well, I’m sorry, but it’s really not that cool. Just use Helvetica instead, or change font types altogether.

So what do you do? You really only need a couple of go-to resources. My first suggestion is to regularly check out the MyFonts Specials page. The vast majority of typeface designs on the Specials page are good. Some are terrible, but at least you’ll be using something besides Comic Sans, Times New Roman, Papyrus or Arial. What? Do I sound like a snobby, overly self-important artsy-fartsy jerk? Well, maybe I am—but only when it comes to font choices.

Second, check out Jos Buivenga’s exljbris Font Foundry. Jos is a Dutch typographer in the forefront of new type design. His designs are friendly and approachable while also imparting a sense of stability, trustworthiness and precision. The heavier weights (bold, heavy) of his designs are very happy and fun. Calluna can be very serious and classic, while Calluna Sans can be more youthful. Bottom line: no matter what project you’re working on, Jos Buivenga’s fonts will work. You can’t go wrong here. Plus—and here’s the kicker—he offers at least one style of all his fonts for free! Yes, free. For many people, good typography starts with Jos.

Use font families. When you’re designing a layout, like a document, website, poster, et cetera, it’s ok to use more than one font. At the most, you should use three. It’s important that fonts match without duplicating each other. Here’s some easy rules to follow:

• Don’t use two different sans-serif typefaces in the same design (Calluna Sans & Gill Sans for instance).
• Don’t use two different serif typefaces in the same design (Jenson & Garamond for instance). The same goes for Slab styles (a.k.a. Egyptian styles), Script styles, et cetera.
• Do use different typefaces from the same type family together. For instance, Calluna & Calluna Sans are great together, as are all the fonts in the Museo family.
• Do use different typefaces from the same designer—as long as they aren’t the same style (see the first point above). For instance, Museo Slab for titles, Calluna Italic for subtitles and Calluna Sans for body text would be a good combination.
• Some other great typography houses to check out are Hoefler & Frere-Jones, TypeTogether, Alejandro Paul, and Erik Spiekerman.

Subscribe to the MyFonts email list. They send out great email newsletters that are short, beautiful, incredibly informative, and they will lead you to new, well-designed fonts.

Imagery

If you need imagery for a design, do not use clipart. Ever. Never ever. Head over to iStockphoto and spend a dollar on a stock photo or stock illustration. If you need to edit a vector illustration, download the free GIMP software.

Logo

Need a logo? Here’s where it gets sticky. Well, I guess everything in this post is potentially sticky, but that’s beside the point—unless you’re sticky. Logo design is really hard. Just being honest here. It takes a lot of time, effort, creative energy and skill to come up with a “good” logo. If you use a stock logo design company, or if you use one of the online logo contest sites, you will not be happy. Period. Maybe at first you’ll see your new logo and think, “Ooooh sparkles!” But in the end, there’s simply no way for a designer to communicate your vision, values and mission without interviewing you, working with you, and charging you a lot of money. So, if you need a logo, call me instead.

Can’t afford to hire me to design your logo? No problem. Just use a suitable typeface, set really big with the letters squished close together (called “kerning”).

• If you’re operating a serious business with lots of history and stability in your brand, use Officina, Jenson Pro or Calluna Sans or even Garamond Premiere Pro. Don’t use plain ol’ Garamond, though.
• If you’re historical and stable but also want to be modern and clean, try Meta, Museo Sans or Gotham. Gill Sans works sometimes as well for this.
• If you want to make sure you fit in, appear trustworthy, and maybe add just a smidgen of European flare, you can use Helvetica Neue (pronounced “Noy-uh”). Be forwarned, though: Helvetica is everywhere. That’s why it makes you fit in with everything. Seriously.
• If you’re a more youthful, organic business, try something like Calluna Sans, Museo Slab, Archer and/or Ideal Sans by Hoefler & Frere-Jones.

Layout

Use the Golden Ratio for everything. What’s the Golden Ratio? 1.62:1. Or, to be more geektastic about it, the Golden Ratio (a.k.a. Divine Ratio) is 1.618034 to 1.  That means if you draw a shape that is 1 inch tall, it should be 1.62 inches wide to fit in the Golden Ratio.  If your logo is 1 inch tall, it should be 1.62 inches wide.

The ratio scales up and down infinitely, so let’s say you’re doing a 1 page newsletter on a sheet of Letter (8.5×11 inches) paper. Let’s say 11 inches will become the “1″ in the ratio. Divide 11 by 1.62, and you get 6.79. So, you could make the main content portion of your page 6.79 inches wide, which leaves you 1.71 inches of width on the page for a little sidebar or table of contents or content callouts or contact info, etc.  Let’s take it another step. Divide 6.79 by 1.62 to get the next step down. The result is 4.19. So, make the header at the top of the newsletter 4.19 inches. And that’s the entire layout!  4.19 inch header (a.k.a. Masthead), 6.79 inch wide content area. Break it up into two columns for some visual interest. Also, put some stock photos in the content, and have text wrap around them.

Use staggered font weights. Have sections of content use headings in a Bold, large type size.  Also, if you’re using a sans serif for body type, use a serif for headings. If you’re using a serif for body content, use a sans serif for headings.  Use italics for long quotes.

Website Design

Get a free WordPress account and use one of the free themes, either the TwentyTen theme or a WooThemes theme. If you’ve got a little money to spend, set up an $8.00/month Rochen account and use the automatic scripts to install WordPress or Joomla. Then buy your own WordPress theme or Joomla theme. At that point, you can get a designer to install your theme for pretty cheap.

Have any other suggestions for people? Share them below in the comments! I’m skimming the surface of lowest common denominator here, and honestly, I don’t really follow any of these suggestions, but for those who need to do desktop publishing cheaply and quickly, I think I’ve given you some good tools here.

Rear of the Business Card

Tammy Crowley-Deloatch owns and operates a family fitness center in Roanoke Rapids, NC called Crowley’s Fitness Center.  She recently got married, and has had some other significant life changes happen. She found herself re-examining her business and realized that while she had changed, the business had not.  She began looking for a way to move the business forward and soon discovered the concept of branding: defining a business’ vision, values, mission, corporate culture, target demographic, projected size, customer experience—then translating those ideas into the visual language.

From the outset, Tammy wanted to have her new brand communicate fun, action, excitement, a family atmosphere, wholistic fitness (mind, body, soul). She also felt strongly that in the same way she was experiencing a personal renaissance, she wanted her customers to see themselves as starting fresh, getting renewed hope to keep trying to reach goals. In short, Tammy is living in a “new day” everyday and wants her customers to do the same.  She didn’t have a name for the business, but she wanted to make sure that she maintained a personal connection to her clients.

I was able to come up with a new name for her business, “New Day Fitness” with the almost-always-accompanying “with Tammy Crowley-Deloatch.”  The guy jumping off the logo was a natural extension of the idea of “jumping into fitness” and communicates excitement and life.  I chose a color palate of blue/orange because orange is such a strong psychological color and is helpful for inspiring people to be active.  Blue is opposite orange on the color wheel, so when used together it provides visual excitement and grabs attention.  Blue also helps to communicate the trustworthiness, experience and knowledge of Tammy.  The overlapping colors behind the letters suggest that there’s fun things going on “inside”—inside the fitness center, and inside the customers.

I chose Myriad Pro Black Italic & Italic for the logo name because Myriad in its Italic settings has such a great playfulness, while balanced with a clean, modern, respectable stance.  You’d never know that Myriad Roman/Semibold is Apple, Inc.’s font of choice! I contrasted Myriad Italic with Chaparral Pro Italic because both typefaces are designed by Carol Twomby, so they both have similar messages. Chaparral is respectable and almost serious, but has all these great little touches of character and fun. It walks a line between whimsy and seriousness that when paired with Myriad Italic really fits the bill.

Applications are being done ahead of a January 2011 launch, including business cards, new brochures for prospective clients, exterior signage, tee shirts for the staff and eventually a web presence.

So far everyone’s happy and excited about the new brand!  It’s always a great feeling to hear a client be so excited about your work. Tammy immediately loved the name I suggested, and felt that the logo really fit her vision perfectly.  I’m looking forward to seeing how New Day Fitness increases and grows over the years.  Who knows, maybe you’ll start seeing New Day Fitness franchises popping up all over the country!

This is the first product from a new company, Satisfy Your Soul.  They are two professional chefs in Burlington, NC who use all natural, locally-sourced ingredients to create unique recipes inspired by their worldwide travels.  This Apple Chutney is inspired by the authentic flavors of India, and uses Winesap apples from the 2010 North Carolina apple harvest.  The curry blend is unique to the Satisfy Your Soul chefs.

They asked me to take their vision for authentic international flavors, chef-created recipes & locally sourced ingredients and create a label design that would communicate all of that.

We also did all the copywriting for this. Jessica came up with a Story Panel that describes the chefs’ inspiration.

Photography by Kevin Lee of Studio Place, Inc. You can reach him at (336)854-8828.

The brand needed to be visually loud without being garish, and needed to have an honest, down-to-earth sensibility about it. I used a high-contrast color scheme, stamped text, a megaphone with blast rays and an overall grunge treatment as tools to develop the brand.

Right off the bat, I created two tee shirt designs for the campaign: heather grey American Apparel cotton crew neck short sleeve shirts. Each uses four colors: the guys uses black/white/red, and the girls version uses purple/pink/white.

I also created a one-page website which currently is used as a landing page which then points to the main GPCC website. This will be developed further in the future as this new program grows. In addition, I purchased the makeupyourownmind.org domain name, and GPCC has buyers negotiating for the variant domains such as .com and .net.

I used a gradient on a almost-neutral gray background to reference the spotlighting employed in the gallery and the fonts I chose are all created by Jos Buivenga of Exljbris, a Dutch typography company.  The “A” is set in Museo 900 and the brand’s fonts are Fontin Sans.

You can visit the Affinity Gallery website here.

But what do you do when you’re not branding an organization? What if you’re branding an event?

Events are transient; they are here one day and gone the next.  Their target audience does not necessarily reflect the target demographic of the organization that’s putting on the event.  For instance, take the Macworld Expo.  It’s main sponsor is Macworld magazine, a periodical aimed squarely at people who have purchased a computer made by Apple, Inc. in the last ten years.  The Macworld Expo, however, is aimed at all technology companies and vendors primarily, and secondarily at technology consumers.  Notice the word “computer” isn’t mentioned.  The Macworld Expo competes mainly against technology expos like E3.  Therefore, the branding of each year’s Macworld Expo is completely independent of Macworld Magazine.

Macworld Magazine Website Homepage

Macworld Expo Website Homepage

So, let’s get down to the how-to part of this article.

1. Interview someone who carries the vision/mission for the event.  This usually doesn’t have to be the president of whatever organization is putting on the event.  You’ll probably find someone in management or an event planner that understands the core purposes of the event.
2. Don’t get caught up in the administrative details of the event.  When you are doing the interview, most managers will want to speak about what the conference will do; that’s not important for the branding.  The promotion and branding must come from the vision, the purpose, the “heart” of the event.  If there is a central theme to keynote addresses, these will be more important to communicate than any particular element of the event.
3. Decide on a central person to highlight in the advertising.  Usually there’s a keynote speaker that’s relatively famous.  You’ll want to make this person central in the advertising. Remember that people connect with people; there’s no greater draw to an event than a human face.  If the event you are branding doesn’t have a keynote speaker, there’s probably some major event or offering that you can highlight.  For instance, if you’re marketing a state fair, you could focus on a favorite competition or a new roller coaster ride.  This “rule” has to be held loosely.  Sometimes it’s best to make a theme the focus of your marketing efforts instead of a person.
4. Decide on a primary and secondary target demographic.  Hopefully the event organizers already have a demographic in mind.  If so, make sure your visual language fits the audience.  You don’t want to use dark, grunge, death metal imagery if your target audience is women over the age of 65 living in rural Georgia, USA.  Conversely, you don’t want to use pink doilies in your design if the target audience is men under the age of 30 living in London, England.
5. Your theme should be original enough to stand out amidst it’s medium (direct mail, email newsletter, website ad banner, etc.) but not so trend-setting as to be unrelatable to the target audience.  This is the core of what it means to be a trend-setting designer. You have to push the boundaries—your own personal skill boundaries and the perceptions of your viewers—but you have to keep your design sufficiently rooted in pop culture. That is, unless you’re looking to shock people.
6. Get a budget figure up-front for all the marketing of the event.  You’ll have to figure in printing costs, shipping for printed materials, domain/hosting for website(s), stock photography, or hiring a photographer, etc. All of that has to be taken into consideration before you quote a price for your part in everything.
7. Lastly, remember to have fun. You’re branding something that’s going to be here and gone very quickly, so don’t invest too much into the project emotionally.  If it gets too tedious, drop the project and move on!

This card needed to be small, attractive, easily read and friendly in its presentation.  I did all the design and copywriting for it.  I also used the card to subtly push the realigned KCC brand, as see in this article.  I used the same corporate identity definitions of font and color to do it, while keeping the purpose of this particular card clear.  The cityscapes on the card are Greensboro and Winston-Salem, to large cities around Kernersville, and the most likely location the cards would be used.

Over the course of two years, the vision has been further refined, and because KCC is essentially a “replant” of a church, the “culture” of the church has changed drastically over two years.  I helped redesign the interior of the church, bringing in modern colors and lighting to the space, and the church is now doing lots of outreach.  In addition, the style of the meetings has changed to a cutting edge experience.  It became clear to me that my 2007 identity had quickly become outdated.  Normally a brand/identity will last much longer than two years, but in special cases, an identity can become outdated if the vision, mission, values or corporate culture of the organization change in large measure.  In KCC’s case, the corporate culture changed enough to cause a disconnect with the identity.  What KCC needed was not a redesign; rather a realign was the best option because the core vision and values had not changed; just the atmosphere of the church.

I kept the basic premise of the brand intact, but updated the typography, adjusted the color scheme and proportions to show a more cutting-edge, modern aesthetic, along with more aggression.  KCC is a church with a lot of forward motion, so the new identity had to reflect that.

The logotype was originally Myriad Pro with Garamond Premier Pro as the subtitle.  They had been chosen for a clean-but-creative look.  For the realigned identity, I chose Bree Extra Bold Oblique for the title and Zapatista for the subtitle.  Bree is a typeface with a pleasing upright-italic feel that exhibits lots of creative flair—KCC has lots of artists and a public art gallery in its building—and Zapatista is an aggressive grungy typewriter font.  I proportioned everything inside the Golden Ratio (a.k.a. Divine Ratio) to show a sense of order amid all the gutteral grunge treatments.  I also removed the vintage surround of the identity to demonstrate the shift from history to future.

My 2007 (top) and 2009 (bottom) logos

The realigned identity is being implemented slowly, as needs arise. This is done to keep costs down for this [essentially] young church.

Things are pretty busy ’round here, but I found the time tonight to share my thoughts on the modern Christian church and how graphic design is being mishandled, as well as what should be done about it.  Check it out!