Team Chemistry.

I will admit that I never fully understood the importance of team chemistry until I settled into my position here at CCV.  I work on a team that is made up of great people… people with talent, character and creativity. More importantly, I work on a team that thrives because of the players and our chemistry.

Chemistry is a major key to our success as a team of creatives and here’s why:

• Good chemistry breeds a level of comfort that removes barriers and improves relationships.
• Good chemistry breeds an attitude of openness to critique and willingness to work together on projects.
• Good chemistry keeps the mood light and the atmosphere fun.
• Good chemistry increases productivity and effectiveness of the overall team.

Team chemistry can never be underestimated when assembling your team, especially teams within the church.  The work of the church is too important to be clouded or corrupted by drama amongst your team members.  I think this concept of chemistry is also especially important when dealing with creatives.  Creative people are sensitive people; we pour our heart and soul into our work… and we need to be surrounded by people who can appreciate that concept – chemistry is key.  I have to give props to my boss, Jon, for keeping chemistry at the forefront of his selection process when building our team – the rewards show themselves on a daily basis!

Where do you rank chemistry on the priority list when adding people to your team?

5 Ways To Ruin A Great Design.

As an active, contributing member of the Church Marketing Lab on Flickr, I’ve seen my fair share of bad design pieces.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to say that everything in the Lab is bad; that would be an unfair assessment.  But, there are times that I find a design piece that could_have_potential and it’s so often ruined by bad design practices.  I’ve also been involved in Graphic Design forums all over the internet and have seen some pretty bad designs outside of church marketing…

Heck, I can look back at my own work from years ago and find things that I did to completely ruin what could’ve been a decent graphic design.  So here are the 5 things that will, almost always, ruin what could be a perfectly good design, in my humble opinion:

1. Stretching the type.

• Seriously… this is basic – don’t do it.  If you’re ever tempted to hit CTRL-T, grab the corner of your bounding box, and stretch that bad-boy without holding the shift key… you need to let go of the mouse and walk away.  Don’t stretch your type!

2. Abusing the ‘Blending Options’.

• The key word to this one is… ABUSING. Blending Options can be your friend; but, more often than not, they’ll turn out to be your worst enemy.  Next time you open up your Layer Styles window and feel the need to check more than 1, or 2 boxes… you could be in some deep trouble, call for help – get out while you can!  SeanP knows all about this one.  : )

3. The ‘Drop Shadow’.

• Even though this could probably fall under ‘Abusing the Blending Options’; it’s serious enough to deserve its own place on this list.  The Drop Shadow option in Photoshop has made amateurs world wide feel like they can keep up with the big boys.  Trust me, adding a Drop Shadow will not make your bad design look any better… quite the opposite my friends.  Do yourself a favor and learn how to create your own shadows.  : )

4. Poor Understanding of Resolution.

• Getting a grip on the basics of resolution will change your world.  I can’t begin to tell you how important this is!  If you’re working on a design for print and you download the web resolution stock image, you’re design is destined for failure.  Nothing worse than a high-resolution design piece sporting low-resolution images…  Get back to the basics and get a grip on resolution.

5. Papyrus Syndrome.

• If you remember anything_at_all, remember this one. If you have a copy of Papyrus on your computer, kill it – now.  This is, quite possibly, the most overused typeface in all of history and especially in church marketing.  But, Papyrus is not alone – Papyrus has friends.  He brought along Bleeding Cowboys, Scriptina, and Comic Sans.  Here’s my advice… don’t choose to use a typeface because everyone else is, or because it’s trendy – choose your typeface based on the feel and flow of your design.  And… kill Papyrus.

Consider Yourself Hooked Up.

Thanks to everyone who read and enjoyed my Evolution Of The Bulletin series. For those of you who have asked, I’m making the InDesign source files available to you… right here – right now. One of our values here at CCV is resourcing other churches… and that’s one of the reasons I love working for this church! We’re all in this together; we’re all here for a common goal – advancing the Kingdom of Christ. If these bulletin source files will help you in accomplishing that mission at your church, please indulge yourself and download them today. Consider yourselves hooked up!

These are Adobe InDesign CS4 files for each phase of the bulletin that I talked about in the 3 part series.  There is also an INX (Adobe Interchange) version of each file.  The links are not included because of the file size, but you should at least be able to open the files and get a gander at the layout.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE BULLETIN SOURCE FILES.

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