Effective Church Communications

How to write visually to reach today’s audiences

12 December, 2009 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

To touch hearts and change, lives it takes more than a list of facts. We want people to see an image in their mind's eye that will cause them to feel an emotion they can respond to.

: A PDF of the article: How to write visually. We want to do more than convey information, we want to create images in the mind's eye so our readers can see the lessons we want to share.

It is not difficult to this, but you have to be intentional about it in your writing. This PDF article will help you.

To download the PDF of the article, click here or on the image.

note: this PDF is from Yvon Prehn's archives and is the only format of this article available presently. Not the greatest quality to be sure, but shared with the belief that the content is useful.

Paper, Printing, and Production

5 December, 2009 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

: This PDF covers a variety of issues, some timeless, such as the importance of paper choice in the quality of your communications and some issues not so timeless, such as delivery methods.

Much of what we do in church communications is timeless—but some isn't and this chapter has a little bit of both.

It is a PDF reprint of my first book on desktop publishing. The information on paper is timeless. The paper choice you make has a big impact on your message and the PDF gives you some good tips for choosing the right paper. I encourage you to read it because there are always church communications pieces printed on paper that was not intentionally chosen, but randomly pulled from the shelf. This method of unthinking production is not a nice way to produce a publication someone labored for hours to produce; nor is it often effective if a cheap paper literally cheapens the message.

The material on printing and the advice on providing mockups is always a good idea.

The material about other production methods, e.g. audio tapes, CDs, is a bit of a retro look back. For many new to church communications, you cannot imagine how revolutionary and shocking it was for me to challenge church communicators to distribute content on CDs. Few computers had CD drives, CD audio was not wide-spread and the few CDs used for data distribution tended to be very expensive. To create movies with computers cost tens of thousands of dollars and to burn your own CDs was impossible. It wasn't until over 12 years later that I started to produce CDs and now their capacity seems a bit confining. All of that to emphasize a frequent refrain in this ministry: our tools will always be changing, but seize every one possible to communicate the gospel.

To download the PDF, click here or on the image.

note: this PDF is from Yvon Prehn's archives and is the only format of this article available presently. Not the greatest quality to be sure, but shared with the belief that the content is useful.

The chapter is from Yvon Prehn's first book on desktop publishing, The Desktop Publishing Remedy, published in 1993 by David C. Cook. The book has gone through numerous editions and reprintings since then and is still a useful source of basic instruction for church communicators. All of the chapters are for sale in both download and spiral bound versions at http://www.lulu.com/yvonprehn under the title of Back to Basics, foundational skills for church communicators.

For church newsletters, there are some things you shouldn’t do

5 December, 2009 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Newsletters are one of the primary reasons people first started creating communications with their computers.

This article was written primarily for people creating newsletters on paper, but its advice is also useful for newsletters created digitally.

It is so easy to change newsletter format on the computer screen, but the reasons why a lack of consistency is a no-no re as valid for online newsletters as they are for paper ones. This PDF will explains those reasons.

The additional no-no of not printing on colors is even more important online. Having a colored or worse yet, patterned background for an online newsletter is a reader's nightmare.

After reviewing a website with a very hard-to-read background of faded squiggly lines running through a tan and white background, I asked the creator of it why his church chose that background.

"Our communication secretary said it looked like parchment and that would be a cool look for a church online newsletter, " he answered.

It wasn't. Bless her heart, I'm sure the church communicator was thinking very creative thoughts and since she also wrote most of the newsletter and laid it out, she understood what it was about and so her focus had turned to making it look interesting. What I'm sure was put in with the best of intentions was a distraction that made the newsletter difficult to read. Paper or screen, nothing beats black print on a white background for clarity.

One associated bit of advice. White text reversed out of a black background is quite popular with some bloggers today. It does look good, but it is harder to read and quite tiring to read at length. Question for those enamored with this look: what is more important, that people think your site looks edgy? Or that they read what you have to say?

If you have short, snappy, pithy, and precise little nuggets, the reverse might work, but don't expect many to read any indepth teaching shared in that way.

To download the PDF and read about the no-nos in more detail, click here or on the image.

note: this PDF is from Yvon Prehn's archives and is the only format of this article available presently. Not the greatest quality to be sure, but shared with the belief that the content is useful.

Picas, a useful way to measure in creating print communications

4 December, 2009 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Picas are an easier measurement to use than inches when doing print communication creation. This PDF shows why.

When you are measuring for print communication creation, it is sometimes difficult to deal with the fractions of inches.

Graphic designers use the pica as the basic measurement because, for one reason, it is a much smaller measure and is easier to work with.

This PDF explains it for you.

The Adobe design programs as well as MS Publisher have the option for you to set your measurements in picas instead of inches. In all of my examples in the PDFs from my basic design book, the "p" measurement refers to picas.

You can buy pica rulers either at art supply stores or online, just Google "pica" and a number of online stores will come up.

To download the PDF, click here or on the image.

note: this PDF is from Yvon Prehn's archives and is the only format of this article available presently. Not the greatest quality to be sure, but shared with the belief that the content is useful.

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note: this PDF is from Yvon Prehn's archives and is the only format of this article available presently. Not the greatest quality to be sure, but shared with the belief that the content is useful.

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note: this PDF is from Yvon Prehn's archives and is the only format of this article available presently. Not the greatest quality to be sure, but shared with the belief that the content is useful.

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