Nerdychristian’s Weblog

Nothing big or super deep tonight, I just wanted to share a few things I’m proud of from work.

A) Newspaper Ad. It will be appearing in the Dallas Morning News and the People Papers

B) Pancake Breakfast!

C) Christmas Dinner Poster. This one will have some massive revisions, but I really like where it is now and wanted to share it before it got toned down.

I was listening to an audio book in the car on my way to lunch when I heard this paragraph:

Brave New World Cover

“Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly–they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced. That’s one of the things I try to teach my students–how to write piercingly. But what on earth’s the good of being pierced by an article about a Community Sing, or the latest improvement in scent organs? Besides, can you make words really piercing–you know, like the very hardest X-rays–when you’re writing about that sort of thing? Can you say something about nothing? That’s what it finally boils down to. “ – Aldous Huxley, Chapter 4 of Brave New World.

You can read the whole thing for free online.

This paragraph really resonated with me, and as I’m looking at communications from churches all over our country I’m realizing that we are trying very hard to say something about nothing. All churches have their “community sings” and “scent organs” that they promote, which have their place, but when these non-piercing messages are made the focus of our corporate message then we have completely failed to convey the truth of Christ to the world around us.

The church has a monopoly on truth, and the Bible is written more piercingly then any other text on the planet! Our work has been done for us, and we go out of our way to dress it up to make it friendly to the world around us. The Bible isn’t friendly; it’s absolutely dangerous. Too often when we lose the focus of what we are supposed to be communicating as a church we trade our Sword of the Spirit for a Nerf Bat.

This was not written while under the effects of Soma.

I’ve always been a nerd, but some how I managed to dodge a bullet and never really became a comic book nerd. As much as I love a good super hero story, it seemed to me that most comic books existed to display shallow characters and cheesy action scenes. The story existed just to display “cool” pictures, the pictures did not exist to communicate a good story. I found this some what upsetting, especially since I’m in the story telling business.

It bugs me that this medium has been crammed full of propaganda and children’s stories. Comics just have so much potential in the area of visual communications, its a shame to see it wasted. If words can communicate well, and images can communicate well, don’t the combination of words and images have the potential to communicate in an even better way? Humans have been using images to tell stories since before civilization began because an image can evoke thoughts and emotions in a way that words simply can’t. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words, right?

It really struck me that a comic can tell a good story when I was given The Watchmen, widely renowned as the best graphic novel of all time. The images are used to tell an amazing and compelling story, not to prop up a meaningless super hero. I shouldn’t have to sell this book to you, I’ll let it’s reviews and awards do that for me. On a side note, I am really looking forward to the release of the movie. I wonder how hard it is to make a Comedian costume…

Back on topic: So as rare and diluted as it is, there ARE great examples of using text and images together to tell a great story. I believe examples of this are increasing in both quantity and quality. This may be a bit on the hopeful side but I believe it is because as a society we are getting better at seeing through fluff, propaganda and because we crave more meaningful stories.

The master of this is unquestionably Scott McCloud. I am a huge fan of his book Understanding Comics, which goes in to great detail explaining how to leverage graphics and illustrations well in order to communicate clearly. Oh, and the book practices what it preaches by doing it all in the form of a comic. Scott has been a champion of the medium for a very long time now and has done a lot to bring comics from being “entertainment for boys under age 10″ to “effective medium for communication”.

The latest example of this that makes me all happy on the inside is the communications that were released with Google Chrome. With all the attention Chrome was getting in the blogosphere (which confuses me since it’s Windows only, don’t all bloggers have pretentious looking Macs?) it was hard to ignore how Google decide to present their new project:

Page One of the Google Chrome comic

Full comic here.

They used a comic to explain a technical achievement and an advancement in software! Normally this kind of information release is handled by technical writers, and is written in a way that both goes over the average Joe’s head and puts him to sleep. However, Google knew that in order to gain market share with their new browser they had to stand out from the crowd. Unfortunately for Google the advancements in Chrome are extremely technical and not at all appealing to read about unless you are a nerd, meaning many people wouldn’t care about Chrome because they did not understand why it was superior. So the geniuses over at Google decided to promote Chrome both visually and textually, with a comic! The dialog is still detailed and technical, but the images do a great job of bringing the words to life and making concepts like processes and multi-threading easy to understand for people without a programming background. Oh, and it turns out that Scott McCloud was the one who actually wrote it.

So what does this have to do with Church Communications? Everything. Traditionally much of what comes out of a church’s communications office is very textually driven. HPPC is extremely guilty of this. The worship guide here is basically a bullet point list of songs, with a low res illustration of a cross on the front. Every announcement in the bulletin is 50 – 75 words with a bold heading. The website has a few images, but the time and attention that should be spent on them is simply unavailable. The weekly newsletter has articles up to 700 words long, but they are extremely limited visually: they may have one picture of a guest speaker, or a posed B&W shot of a group of people, and there is no way to alter the layout of the weekly newsletter with out causing a riot. Everything, it seems, could be communicated just as well in braille.

Obviously, my biased opinion is that we need to focus more on imagery than we currently do. Text is still extremely important because without it you just have meaningless images, but I think emphasis on text needs to be scaled back so that it compliments images more often then it pushes them out.

No, I am not suggesting that HPPC release a graphic novel or that it should create a mini-series titled “Ron Scates versus The Hulk!” (although I would buy that in a heart beat), but what I am suggesting is that we retool our communications to have less text, less lists, and more images from in house photography, not stock. It is my desire to tell the story of HPPC to both members and non-members of the church, so that people can see why we value making disciples for Christ and to show people what we are doing as a body of believers. HPPC has a lot of amazing things going on at it, but it’s largely hidden! What a better way to tell the story of HPPC than to do it with compelling imagery?

Telling stories well is a vision that everyone in the communications ministry at HPPC shares. God willing, you will see some very engaging story telling coming out of our office pretty soon.

I think I should have drawn this blog post…

Quick update before I go home for the evening!

Since working at HPPC I’ve been privileged to create three videos that were considered “super big freaking deals” when I was given the task, and then either not used or barely used at all. Too compensate for some of the frustration that goes along with watching your projects die, I present to you three short videos:

Sr High Fall Retreat teaser UpStream 2008 from Zachary House on Vimeo.

Created for a fall retreat at HPPC for Sr. High Students. The branding was, ahem, significantly modified since I posted this video, but this is the gist of it. I’m not sure if or in what capacity this was actually used over in the youth department.

The Bedrock @ HPPC from Zachary House on Vimeo.

Created this for a job interview, which sealed the deal for my employment at HPPC. So i twas successful in the sense that I’m getting a paycheck, but the branding and ideas weren’t actually used in anything. Everything in this project has been reworked and is being called the “Core4″, which is totally a Bedrock rip off imho.

Core4 from HPPC Comm on Vimeo.

Video I created for the aforementioned “Core4″ project. Audience outside of the Communications ministry: 1.

Hope you enjoy those. Most of the work was done with iMovie HD and Adobe Illustrator. Hopefully, next time I posted a video I’ll be referencing Young Life, After Effects, and Final Cut Pro!

When I started college I realized that I had to continually keep learning, and push my brain to keep growing and absorbing more information in order to become a better student or a better designer.

Fast forward to now. Turns out I completely forgot about the importance of doing that, and the only new skill that I’ve really picked up in the past four years (besides serious guitar hero skills) is Adobe Indesign. Sure I’ve gotten better at what I do as a jack-of-all-trades designer, but I’m not really expanding or pushing anything new. So I’m resolved to keep learning, and getting better at using what I love for Christ in ministry.

Things I’m going to get better at:

• Christian Communications as a whole.
  • My first two months working at HPPC as an Art Director have really revealed to me the importance of doing communications well. It sounds lame, business like, and somewhat tied in to the “christian” businesses that we have all learned to despise (although, some times it can be worth a chuckle or two). However, when done correctly it is an amazing boon to the church.
  • Attend #echo and #inovate08
  • Reading Church Marketing 101 by Richard L. Reising
  • Read and follow those who have really set the example of how to do communications as an effective ministry, such as Brad Abare.
  • Continually remind myself that projects I’m working on aren’t isolated, but instead are just a piece of a larger puzzle and strategy.
• Writing
  • Hopefully a blog will help me improve in this category.
• Video
  • Time to outgrow iMovie. I’m primed to learn After Effects and Final Cut. Tutorials for both are waiting on me!
• Web
  • My web skills stopped being current about ten years ago. I have some serious catch up to play, and Simo has offered me some great resources for boning up on CSS, or whatever the heck it is web designers use these days. Maybe a portfolio website will be soon to follow?
• Production
  • I’ve volunteered to be the AV guy for Young Life Richardson. They have a kick butt crew doing some amazing things with kids there, and I’m excited to be a part of it. I also see this as somewhat of a “being relevant” boot camp, and since it isn’t in a church environment I should be free to make the evening as cool as possible from a tech side.
  • I also see serving with YL as an excellent way to get better at After Effects and Final Cut, and working with Joe Berry and Kate Whatever will be great way to get better at the “Communications as whole” as I try to take their message and make it reach more kids.

And that doesn’t even touch on the areas I want to develop my spiritual life, and my relationship with my girlfriend.

The only hang up is, of course, self discipline. I’m hoping that living with two YL leaders will help keep me accountable to making YL club rock kids socks off, but I’m fully expecting these strides to conflict with some of my favorite activities.

So, learning here I come!

Blogging to-do

• thoughts from Echo
• thoughts about Inspire 08 @GCC
• thoughts on Joy
• continued thoughts on my study of “Desiring God” with Bethany.