The Mission

This year, the churches of Manningtree held a Mission together. Early on, I was asked to be a part of the central publicity team in a design capacity with three others all with different skills to bring to the table. I was also asked to be in charge of the publicity specifically for my church.

I went into it, eyes open, knowing how much work it was going to be, but I don't think I realised quite how much I had done until the Mission ended this last Sunday, I spent most of Monday trying to send off one final design, and then couldn't get out of bed on Tuesday. Literally.

It has been, however, an amazing experience, and a delight to work as part of a team. It was really good to stay accountable and organised, and those parts which I did as part of the team were those I think went best.

The logo:

I had a lovely selection of photos of the sun over the river Stour thanks to a friend, and having twice design the front of the programme, I ended up using both of these photos variously for different projects. The logo itself seemed to work out pretty well, and ended up on just about everything.

The main programme:

I haven't had to design anything with so very much information on it before, so it was a real challenge, and a big exercise in restraint. It needed to be clean and readable, but also to somehow reflect the 'light' theme of the Mission. Over all, though having stared at it so long I may have now lost all perspective, I'm pretty pleased with it.

Fliers:


 When seen like this, I really am pretty pleased with how these turned out. And this isn't all of them!

Follow-up leaflet:
The follow-up leaflet needed to tie-in with the original programme, but it also needed to look different enough that people didn't think they had already seen it. I was really pleased that it worked in the same design scheme as the original programme as together, they really do look like part of a set.

Follow-up advert:

The follow-up also then went in to the local paper as an advert. It needed a reasonable amount of redesigning to make it fit, plus another course had to be fitted it, and then needed its colour enhanced for newspaper print quality.

I'm so glad that I was a part of this. It was an amazing thing to be involved with, and I realised yet again how much I love seeing my work in print. It's one thing to print it yourself, but it's quite another to open a box and discover four-hundred copies of something you did. I can't recommend it enough.

Christmas cards

For the last two years, I have been really grateful (and at moments, stressed) to be asked to design the community Christmas card. The churches in this area send out one card together with all of the different services over the Christmas period included. For as long as I remember, it had the same design, and was, I think, photocopied onto printer paper. I was just ramping up to offer to do something about it when, in 2012, I was asked to design a card which would be properly printed and sent out to everyone in the area.

My little head nearly exploded.

Here's the design from 2012:

I desperately wanted to get away from European Mary and Joseph in a stable with a donkey. And a cutesy angel. And the littlest mouse. You know what I'm talking about. I also was dealing with making sure that I kept those churches who were quite keen on Mary happy, while also keeping those happy who were so keen to not be seen to be too keen on Mary, that they kind of ignored her. I should qualify this by saying that no-one raised this as a problem with me. I was just a bit paranoid.

Honestly, I'm still pretty pleased with it. I hope those who got it liked it too. I don't think I did a horrible job, as I was asked to do it again this last year:

 I am almost certain that my vision for this didn't entirely translate, and therefore I potentially baffled some people, and possibly started conversations in houses all over Manningtree with families asking each other why their local churches believed Bethlehem to be a patchwork of multi-coloured buildings of a startling wide range of architectural types.

It all started with this design, which was in turn heavily influenced by this one by Karsten Blem.

I am a patient crafter. I'm the girl who will sit for hours making something. However, my first attempt at making the first of those woven hearts nearly killed me. In retrospect, I think I had printed it wrong.

I was also busy being super influenced by the folk-art of Russia, particularly via Disney's 'Peter and the Wolf' from 1946.

No, I'm serious. If you want a feast for your eyes, just type 'traditional Russian art' into an image search. It's gorgeous.

It was done by doing a rough draft on Photoshop, then tracing over it by hand in pencil, and then pen and ink, then put back into Photoshop to add colour, using a palette drawn almost exclusively from Russian art. The top line of the quote was also done by hand then edited in PS. The silhouettes in the stable were added in PS as well, and were, in fact, the same as the year before. Just tiny.

In all, I'm pretty happy with it, but it may have ended up a little complicated visually, and the heart-shape got a little lost in the design.

Christmas

For someone who loves Christmas, I generally approach Christmas posters both warily and wearily.

I always want a theme throughout the Christmas publicity, and normally the perfect theme occurs to me about three posters too late. Also, I'm always trying to look as little like your average small-town church as possible.

It's a minefield, and not always one that I successfully negotiate. I'm starting to lean further towards simplicity, but you never know. My theme this year might take us into hitherto uncharted waters of glitziness.

Anyway. Here are some of the posters from the last two years.

Easter, Lent and such

I always start thinking about Easter posters far too late. I have a happy little dream that one day, I'll be totally on it, and they'll be out super early. That almost happened this year, and then a combination of moving house, forgetting to back up fonts onto my laptop, and general exhaustion rather ruined it. Next year then.

This was from 2013 when I went with a 'new life' theme.

This was the Lent Course from the same year. We were using a specific book (see below), so I designed it using the book design combined with the film poster design.

This year's Easter posters were heavily influenced by my new-best-design-friend, Pinterest. Particularly having seen this design, and this one, I put together a set of Holy Week posters. I hope that I fell the right side of being influenced rather than ruthlessly stealing ideas. It's what I was going for, anyway.

The eagle-eyed will notice the stupid mistake on the Maundy Thursday poster, which was one of the reasons that these never got used as separate posters. By the time I noticed, my desktop had been packed and put in storage, and my laptop didn't have Futura font on it. Always check that you have the fonts you need. This is the lesson that I have learnt. It was not all in vain. I converted these all into Order of Service covers, both the Sunday posters into slides for Sunday service presentations, and they did eventually go out as a poster:

Yes. There are two different fonts going on there. Ironically, I think it actually made it easier to read, so maybe it was a good decision. Or mistake...

Arts

Over the last couple of years I've done a few different projects for art-themed events. Generally, it means that I'm allowed to be a bit more creative with it, which also therefore has plenty capacity for me to both make posters that are unreadable, and look back at them and wish I hadn't done that. And that. And oh boy, that. Never mind. I have learnt from them, and that's the important bit.

This was in 2012. I still have a little crush on the fancy ampersand. I seem to remember that it took me a while to get it right, particularly with all those lines, but I still like how it turned out.



This was done this year. It was a really great project, where I was given the words laid out roughly where they should be, a vague idea of images, and then told to go to town. So much fun.

The paint in the tube was originally red, which I liked as a part of the colour palette, but it also looked a little like blood. Sad, but true.

Most of the artistic elements were first done on paper, edited in Photoshop, then re-worked on paper with pen and ink, then re-edited in Photoshop. It's a bit labour intensive, but I like the way it comes out.

Messy Church

Messy Church posters are my nemesis. The MC logo has pretty strict rules surrounding it, meaning that poster design incorporating it is sometimes tricky. Therefore everything else has to work with it. It's a good exercise in restraint which is, in turn, probably good for me. Probably.