Today marks the kick-off of StriveMind, my self-run media and design business. And with radio ads beginning, I hope the contracts start pouring in.
Since leaving college, I've mostly run my business through word-of-mouth. Recommendations and inquiries about my work have been enough. But now, I'm approaching the industry in a more unified and professional manner. I'm a multimedia designer, and I might as well act look like one!
With the Internet Evangelism Day coming up on April 29th, 2007, Sequoia has decided to completely redo their website. So we've put together a small but promising team to look after it.
So why redo the entire site design and content? Try taking the site design check-list, and see where you stand. In a day and age where everybody looks up your website before dealing with anybody, it would be in your church's best interest to score over 250 out of 377 on that test.
Many of you web developers/designers are probably familiar with Includes. It's a process of literally including one file into another on your website.
For example, you could use the process to include a menu into your page. That way, you can have the same menu across many pages... and if you want to change the menu, you will only have to fix it once.
I know, this is pretty basic stuff. But bear with me for a moment here. So, Includes generally require some sort of server scripting... whether it be PHP, ASP, or similar, to perform the operation without the user knowing this is happening.
But what if you're running off of an older server, that doesn't have any of these functions? I recently ran into that problem with a contract I'm working on.
That's where those wonderful people at Dynamic Drive come in. They run a great site with all sorts of useful web scripts. Many of which you can implement with some simple cut-and-paste.
And now we bring AJAX into the picture. Or Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. And specifically, DD's technique that requires no server-scripting whatsoever.
Here's some excellently designed church websites that I've came across over the last little while. All feature brilliant designs, intuitive communication and interactivity, and good content. Here they are, in no particular order.
Take a look:
DV Guru just posted a great article on why you shouldn't go to film school. And really, this probably applies to just about any arts-related program out there.
There's the first 4. Now go read all 10 at DV Guru.
- Your favorite filmmaker didn't go to film school.
- Digital Video.
- Film school is expensive.
- The Internet.
There's quite an interesting selection of color (colour for you Canadians) pickers on the net out there, so I thought I'd list a few of my favorites.
Use these helpful tools to pick color schemes for your print, video, and web material. A good color scheme does wonders to attract viewers, and lead their eyes to your message.I've finally gotten around to getting an account at Flickr. After all, it's the biggest and most successful photo-sharing community around.
It's fast, it's easy, and it has all sorts of tools... like being able to upload directly from your computer or cellphone... or putting a script on your website to display your Flickr photos.
My only complaint, is that they limit free accounts to only 3 photo albums! My photo organizer on my computer has dozens of albums, so how am I supposed to narrow that down to 3? I've more or less decided on Things I See, Things I Love, and Things I Make.
Luckily, Flickr's pro account is only $25 a year, and upgrades this to allow many more features.
What you need:
Well it looks like my efforts to categorize my blogging has been rendered useless... but for a good reason:
Blogger is back in Beta.
Or rather, the new version is. And in a few days or weeks, we'll have plenty of new features to play around with.
Here are the more exciting features that are coming out in the new version:
- My template in Dreamweaver -Ahhh, batch processing... the wonders of making your computer do the boring repetitive work, so you don't have to!
Right now, I have a video for church batch rendering into DV, DVD mpeg, DivX, and Quicktime.
Ohhh, but it applies to so much more. I can record what's called an Action in my audio editing software, and set it to do as many functions as I want, to as many files as I want. Like normalize, filter, and save them all to mp3.
Or in Photoshop, I can record all sorts of crazy things to make my job a lot easier. For example, you can tell it to Open a picture, Desaturate, Save, and Close. Batch, wait a moment, and it's done. It just turned all of your photos black and white without you having to do the work. (How to)
Just wind it up, and off it goes!
The guys over at Church Marketing Sucks have an excellent post on the usage of stock photography. And they have an excellent point. What with the same stock photos turning up on totally different products, and the much overused stock cliches.
Yes, I'm guilty of using the occasional stock shot from stock.xchng or Flickr, but most of my design work makes use of my own photography, or pics taken by people in the same company or organization. Really, I would much rather not use any stock if I didn't have to. Using original photographs and media ensures that your work will not be misrepresented by another group. For example, if your church purchased a stock photo, and used it an a large marketing campaign, it would be relatively easy for a malicious group to get the same photo, and use it to take advantage of or estrange your hard-earned market.
However, the quality of your work is another consideration. If you are not a good photographer, or do not have access to one, then maybe your only choice is to seek suitable material from a stock gallery. The message and quality of your work always come first.
To stock or not to stock? That is up to you.
Here's an interesting ideas to help eyes stick to your church site.
Use flickr to make a website badge. Load some photos from your church events onto flickr, or if you're handy with server programming, write your own script to randomly display a series of images. It will keep things interesting, and always changing.
Also, take a look at some other ways you can use the free flickr service.
Looks like an eccentric guy down south has been spending huge numbers of hours each year putting together displays of synchronized christmas lights timed to music.
Carson Williams has 16,000 lights on his house, linked back to a computer and animated to music. Anyone outside of his house can tune in to a short-ranged FM radio transmitter set up to hear the songs as they're played. Check out this awesome video of his house performing Wizards of Winter from the Trans-Siberian Orchestra.
And if you're really daring, you can even build your own light display.
Another potentially great Christian reach out, if handled properly. Thnk about it... wild and crazy lights going on and off, and cars lining up for miles to see the show, and tune in to your selected christian music. (perhaps David Crowder, DC Talk, or Newsboys?)
It's a pretty simple idea, really: One player emails a Photoshop document to the other containing a single layer. Each player progressively adds a layer until the match is over, either by time, withdrawal, or mutual consent. A guest adds comments in real time and the people watching vote for a winner. - Read at G4
