This was a quickie. Like I told some new designer friends: an istockphoto graphic and some typography and we’re done; here it is:

This is our typical graphics package: Bulletin cover & sermon notes (printed in house), generic background graphic for screens, keynote background, and web header. We need to start adding CD/DVD labels & case covers as well.

A little note on the bulletin cover – if we outsourced our printing, I would definitely have had full black coverage on the front and maybe even a galaxy, star system theme along with the graphic. Since we print in-house, I was trying to save on ink.

That’s all folks.

• I’m about become an Uncle for the first time in my life.
• Jen and I are about to celebrate 9 years of marriage & 15 years of being together! I don’t deserve to be with such an amazing woman, seriously.
• I got myself a Blackberry Curve to replace my 2 year old Treo 755p. Moving from Palm to BB, was not too hard, in fact I really like my BB. There’s a lot I like, like: Bluetooth tethering that actually works (most of the time), Ubertwitter, Sprint Navigation, Google Mobile Apps, Facebook for BB, Pandora. What I don’t like: having to pull the battery out (per Sprints advice) every day or two to reset the phone – huh? And when it restarts, it takes like 2 minutes (maybe I’m just picky). Also, it has those “Windows” kind of hic-ups – you know, when the little hour glass appears & spins around for minutes at a time…
• I’ve been working on ideas for a new logo for Rancho Community Church since the day I started there. After 6 months, I finally found something and everyone (that I know of) is really stoked about the new look. Here’s the old logo:
  
  And the new one:
  
• I posted this (and other versions) to a flickr group for some feedback and found out that it made it’s way over to churchmarketingsucks.com, which I think means that it doesn’t suck. I just thought it was cool that it made it on their front page (along with another piece of art I did for our Missions team).
• The logo is really cool to me because it says a few things: Notice there’s five squares that make up the cross. Those are our “five brands”, or five areas that as a church, we are focused on: Connecting Lives, Teaching Truth, Building Families, Helping Others, Recovering & Restoring. Each color represents a different “brand” and each brand has it’s own logo (depicted here). The squares in the shape of the cross also convey a feeling of ancient-modern; the ancient cross with a modern spin – it speaks to Rancho being a multi-generational church. Also, the multi-colors is also representative of multi-culture, which Rancho has as well – and will undoubtedly grow more and more. All that to say, I think it works well.
• School is ramping up, getting ready to start in a few weeks. I’m helping with the planning of our Teacher Orientation week – which I’m stoked about. I had this crazy idea of getting Dan Cathy (yes, he Twitters) from Chick-fil-A to come and speak (he’s the COO, from Atlanta). I talked to one of our local Chick-fil-A marketing people and she put me in touch with Andrew Cathy, Dan’s son – and long story short: he’s scheduled to come speak one day during our orientation week! I’m so stoked & can’t really believe it. We’re going to have our entire staff (church and school) attend his session, and I can’t wait.
• Miles, my son, is going to be turning 7 in about a month and I can’t believe it. Seems like just last year we were changing his diapers. He’s going to be heading to First Grade at Rancho Community; all day, five days a week – for the first time. We are so proud of him – he’s such a good boy. I’m trying to be more intentional with him, praying for him, sharing things with him to build his character, teaching him about things, like appreciation for music, the Bible, kindness, selflessness, helping his mom & sister – it’s so much fun being his dad. I’m so thankful for him.
• Macy… oh Macy. She’s so cute and (can be) so sweet. But she gives us a run for it. Being a dad to a daughter is a completely different ballgame than begin a dad to a son – at least for me. She’s a good little girl, very intelligent, but she pushes the limits too (me and Jen joke that maybe we just don’t remember how hard Miles was when he was three). I’m trying to learn how to be the best dad I can to her, and for her. I’m praying for patience & wisdom. Today she reached her “level 3″ at swimming lessons – she can almost swim by herself at three years old. We were so proud of her today!
• Got to spend some time with my brother, James, a few weeks ago – that was really cool.
• I’m going to facilitate a community class, sponsored by Rancho Community, on social media. It should be a 6-10 week class familiarizing people with things like Twitter, Facebook, blogging, and all that goes along with that. It should be a fun way to build some new relationships outside the walls of the “church”. Anyone local interested in being a part of that? I’m gonna need some speakers too… Anyone?
• Oh yeah, and… we’re in the middle of designing, developing, and beta-testing a new website for Rancho Community (almost forgot about that little project). Working hard with Daniel Murphy on this project – and it’s HUGE. Should be live in a couple weeks if all goes well.
• I need to delegate some of this social media, publicity, marketing – whatever you call it. Right now I am managing about 4-5 Facebook pages, the church blog, the school website, helping with the church website (above), and five twitter accounts. Luckily, I have one volunteer helping with one of the Facebook pages… any more volunteers?

Well, that’s all for now. How are things going with you?

Before:

Time to clean & reorganize:

Ready to go again:

How do you stay organized?

This was a quick job for our Women’s Ministry – a screen graphic.

This was a super quick job for our High School Ministry – a quarter page flyer.

Retractable Banner design (original art designed by Tyson Morlet) – I did the layout and a little logo adjustment.

Another quick design for a banner for a missions focus. Rancho is “adopting” a project to bring the Bible in audio to the Palwano people of Southern Philippines. Read more at the Rancho Blog here: http://blog.ranchocommunity.org/2009/04/01/palawan-missions-project/

Standard commitment card – for the Palawan project.

The Pointe is Rancho’s college/young adult worship service on Sunday Nights. They needed a little identity branding, so we’re starting here. Very simple, but you’ll start to see how we use in over the next couple months.

Another banner – this one for the Temecula Murrieta Rescue Mission. An istock image takes care of the lighthouse theme – we’re going very graphic (leave out the logo) so it’s more timeless.

This is a 6′ x 8′ banner that will be placed in 2 locations at the entrances of Rancho. Real simple 55mph sign.

I’ve got a couple other iron’s in the fire that will probably be finished next week. Along with striight up designing, I’ve been super busy on the communications side of things, here’s a list of stuff that I’ve been working on:

• Launched Rancho’s official blog, check it out here & help promote it!
• Started the @ranchocommunity twitter (since then we’ve been slowly getting the Rancho staff on board)
• Took over the Rancho Community Facebook Group – hoping to build that up (have you joined?)
• Started a Facebook group for the Temecula Murrieta Rescue Mission – in less that 3 weeks it has almost 300 members! Hoping to pass this one off soon
• Started the @tmrescuemission twitter account – I plan on passing this one on to someone else too
• Started a Flickr account for Rancho & been trying to keep a study flow of photos going there
• Met with the school’s PTF (Parent Teacher Fellowship) for the first time – trying to learn how the school functions (it’s a daunting task!)

That’s about all I can think of now. I love my job. The people I get to work with are amazing. The church is doing some amazing things and I get the priviledge of doing my best to get the word out effectively and with style. Hope I can keep up!

This is a newpaper ad – a last minute project (but honestly, what isn’t?)

This is a banner (or a couple banners, not sure yet). We’ll be promoting the school for 2009 enrollment at the church and at open houses over the next couple months.

And this is a powerpoint presentation – there’s a few slides, so I just included this one…

Now these are ideas that may never work, but would be cool to get the word out quickly and cheaply!

So, that’s what I’ve been up to this week…

This was a rather quick promotion screen graphic for an event for our Women’s ministry.

This was a flyer for our Christian Schools. I admit it looks a little old school (no pun intended), but I think it still turned out good & clean. There were a couple additions that I might not have added that make it a little busy.

And the big job I’m still working on is a completely new website for our Christian Schools, which is comprised of four separate schools (preschool, elementary, middle, high schools). All but one needs a logo/brand, and the whole site needed to be built from the ground up and super quickly. So I used Wordpress and a Woo Theme. Still lot’s of work to do but it’s up and functional for now – we’ll probably button it up and make a big deal out of it by the end of next week. (and yes, there’s a lot of istockphoto.com stuff going on here – it’s mostly place holders until we can get our own photos).

I’d love some healthy feedback on any of these projects & I plan on posting as much of what I do as I can (that’s why I call it a ‘Design Confessional’. I want to get better and stay ‘with it’ while still being effective. So let me know what you think, please!

Oh yeah, his name is Adrian Rodriguez and you can check out his crazy skills here, follow him on twitter here, and facebook him here. Spread the word people.

I had some fun tonight with a little tutorial that I found here. I forgot how awesome Photoshop is!

Wow.

We watch all our TV via the internet. And it sure would be nice to have it on the big screen (if you consider a 32″ 4:3 Toshiba a big screen). So I’m workin on an inexpensive solution, which includes some video adapting & wireless keyboard & mouse. When I happened upon this beauty. Apple has such stlye, check it out (and it’s affordable too!).