pictures from the road

Below are some pics from a family vacation up to the Napa Valley area in California!

branded: pdym

Just finished extending the Purpose Driven Youth Ministry 2008 Collection, with the revision of the Student Ministry Logo and PDYM Regional Conferences logo.

As we were refining these designs, our goal was to create two designs that were distinctly different, but that had a few common variables so that you could tell they were related! Cousins, but not kissing cousins.

You can find more info about both of these events at pdymblog.com

some photos from the road

Cruising through Northern Arizona (Sedona), thought I would share some pics from the road!

living on the edge - christmas style

Looking for a discount on some leadership resources?
I just finished this little design for some Christmas discounts from LOTE.org
You can check out the sale here

featured project: coastland tampa

We are just putting the final touches on this logo design, and will soon be applying this to some collateral for the Identity Package... I'll be sure to show you the whole Identity Package put together once it is completed...

featured project: storm student church

Just finished on this branding project for Storm Student Church in Mcallen, TX.
It's not often I work with red, green, and blue in a design, but felt the colors balanced out the type nicely!

"I can do that in my sleep"

You know that old term " I could do that in my sleep"?
Apparently it is true, as I can be humorous in my sleep.
Here is how my wife recalled it (I can't remember, I was asleep)
Jana (waking me up): "Leigh you're dreaming."
Leigh (in my sleep): "I know, I'm McDreamy"

Then I went back to my dream. I can tell jokes in my sleep.

christmas card design

I was looking to do something a little different for our family Christmas card this year... after some inspiration from Flight of the Conchords, I came up with this little design below!

got a miserable job?

A few months ago at Catalyst I really enjoyed Patrick Lencioni who was one of the main communicators... he talked about his new book "The Three Signs of a Miserable Job", discussing Irrelevance, Anonymity, and Immeasurement. It was really interesting and thought it would be a great help to people working on a team. You can find more info at www.tablegroup.com/

from the archives: am i good enough?

This design was for a series at Carmel Baptist Church in North Carolina... the idea was a student-friendly design that had an exam feel to the application. Below are some samples of graphic applications for this series.

photoshop that image online

If you don't want to shell out the money for Photoshop, but want to do some simple editing on those pictures for a sermon illustration or cool background, Firefox has some good news for you!
They have released an Add-On called Picnik that enables to you to do simple manipulation of images within your Internet Browser, on a PC or a Mac.
You can download the add-on for Firefox here.

If you are already using this add-on, let me know what you think of it!

welcome back to blogging

sorry, the triptofen (spelling?) from the turkey last Thursday really affected my blogging and creative skills... leaving me virtually useless laying on the couch watching football. It wore off after putting Christmas lights up at my house.
I am back!

you + 1 orphan

I just finished working on these two brochures for the HIV/AIDS Initiative and Orphan Ministries at Saddleback Church and thought I would show you the finished product!
The goal here was to raise awareness for these two ministries and educate people on action steps they can take to serve with these ministries. The objective of the design was to create a similar look, using some similar elements, but also to have enough differentiating them. Kind of like cousins, but not of the kissing kind!

graphic ark

I have been working with a client in this last week, they are doing a series on the Ark of the Covenant, and were looking for some quality graphic representation of the series name.
I have never worked on any designs with the Ark, and hope Moses isn't rolling in his grave now because of it!

a fresh Christmas

I have been working on this design with a client for the last couple of weeks... they were looking for some less traditional design to visually communicate the Christmas message, based from the title "The Miracle Child". We still wanted to keep some Christmassy (sp?) undertones and the red played this out perfectly! (in my humble opinion)

Feliz Navidad!

featured project: first calvary id package

Just finished up the final touches for the First Calvary Baptist Church Identity Package, thought I'd give you a look... I am really happy with the colors and iconography of this design!

31 Favorite Fonts

In memory of my 31 years so far here on planet Earth, I thought today I would list out my 31 current favorite fonts!
Here goes (in no particular order)...
31 - Jane Austen
30 - Madfont
29 - Phoenix Sans
28 - Steak
27 - Array
26 - Futura MDCnBT
25 - Al Kelso R
24 - Helvetica Neue
23 - Cooper Black
22 - Dirty Headline
21 - N.O. Movement
20 - Eurostile
19 - Violation
18 - Coolvetica
17 - Scriptina
16 - Amazed
15 - Reservoir Grunge
14 - Rosewood Std Fill
13 - Essai
12 - Bleeding Cowboy
10 - Century Gothic
09 - FT Rosecube
08 - Trajan Pro
07 - Trade Gothic LH Bold Extended
06 - Aldo
05 - Alte Haas Grotesk
04 - Myriad
03 - Trebuchet
02 - SF New Republic
01 - Black Widow

Why a logo should cost more than your lunch.

I read this over at graphicdesignblog.co.uk and thought it was a great article. I tweaked the verbiage slightly to make it relevant to your ministry, but props to Tara from Graphic Design Blog for this article.


Why should a logo cost more than your lunch?

1 - A logo is the very first impression people get of your church:
Before a potential parishioner even walks through your church door, your logo is a representation of your ministry. It can make a ministry appear large, small (whether it really is or not) fun, serious, professional…

2 - A logo needs longevity:
Once a logo is designed it will represent your ministry for many years.

3 - A logo needs to be original:
A logo should be designed specifically for your ministry. A cheap “generic logo” may not reflect your ministry’s values. A cheap logo may also use clip art which could end up being used by another company or ministry.

4 - A logo should look professional:
You wouldn’t take a potential date to MacDonalds for lunch, in effect this is what is being done with a cheap logo. A logo should give your ministry a professional image, appropriate to its needs.

5 - A logo should reflect the time and thought gone in to designing it:
One of the problems here is that people don’t always realise the amount work that goes into a professionally designed logo:
The research - even if the budget is quite small I would expect at the very least to research other similar ministries as far as demographics, and how they present themselves
The brainstorming of ideas
The 4 or 5 logo options worked up on the computer
The amends, tweaking and further amends

6 - A logo is the starting point of your whole image:
The colors, typography, and style of a logo will often dictate the overall look of the rest of your ministry's literature and multimedia.

from the archives: boy meets girl.

I got in the time-machine and went back to 2005 for this piece of design from the archives. The main image really set the tone for this piece, and I love how their interaction was a simile for the title of the series.

Looking for some similar design work for your ministry? Let me know!

like "studying" logos?

At the website Brand New they do case studies of different corporate logo redesigns (such as Holiday Inn, Toys R Us, etc) and allow commenting about the redesign.
While all information is subjective and opinion-driven, it does provide some learning about the redesign process as well as some ruthless criticism!

hoops of hope - redesign

Just last week I did a little redesign on the Hoops of Hope shirts that all Hoops of Hope participants will receive this year... my friend Kurt Johnston had a cool blog post about Hoops of Hope last week, click here to read it.

featured project: first calvary

I have been working with Kevin Massey on a new look for the First Calvary Baptist Church in lovely South Carolina.
The team at First Calvary were looking for a contemporary logo that would complement the magnificent older church building but not look outdated. They were also excited about incorporating a stand-alone icon that they could use on all different types of media. We are getting down to the fine print at the end of the design concept and I thought I would show you a couple of options we currently have. Enjoy!

We have other samples of Logo Design at our Portfolio Page at sartidesign.com

the firey update

Things have settled down here a little in the last 24hrs, the fire is sill raging, but not so close to our house anymore. The lake right next to our house had 4 different helicopters draining water from it all day from 9 - 5pm, with a helicopter flying 100ft above our house, rattling the windows every two minutes, all day! I am happy that they had the right conditions to work in, but the noise was unbearable and worked down the road at the church for most of the day.
It's 11:00pm here and I just ducked my head outside as there were plenty of helicopters right above our house, it turns out it was all the 11pm news-crew helicopters and they took off right at 11:30pm. As I was outside the fire was glowing bright, so I grabbed the camera and tripod and took a few shots from right outside our driveway. Looking at the photos, the fire was actually on the closer mountain ridge last nigt. Here are some shots of the fire, as well as the helicopters in the morning.





This last shot was taken with a 300mm zoom lens from about 6 miles (10kms) from the actual fire... that makes those some big flames!

nature's design

Been trying to work today, but with a big fire just a mile or so away, I haven't been feeling too creative... here are some pics from our neighborhood.

Photoshop for Ministry?!

I was down in San Diego at the YS Conference this weekend, and as I was looking through the comprehensive list of seminars I noticed one that was titled something like "Creating Sermon Outlines in 9.5 minutes using Photoshop"... by a teacher who has a company called Photoshop for Ministry

Have you ever used these guys for teaching Photoshop? Did you go to the seminar at YS?
I would have poked my head in there but I had my kids with me the whole time... not good for seminars!

sartidesign OPEN SOURCE?!

This last week I have been thinking about opening up the archives at sartidesign and having some designs available as Open Source Photoshop and Illustrator files to people in ministry.

Is this something you or your church would be interested in downloading and utilizing in your ministry?

If you were already a client of sartidesign, how would you feel about your design being made available for other churches to tweak and customize for their ministry?

Obviously I wouldn't make really recent work available on Open Source, it would be at least a year old to honor the clients who paid for the original customized work, but I feel it is the right thing to do to have ministries share their resources.

I'll keep you updated on this thought process as far as legalities, willingness, and interest. If you are wondering how this would function, check out LifeChurch.tv's OPEN.

hiv/aids youth summit

I just completed this "email blast" design for the HIV/AIDS Youth Summit on December 1st... you can view the full promotion by clicking here

Did you know that your church can host this event live via simulcast for free?
This would be a great event for students interested in Social Justice and making a difference in this world. You can sign your church up for this event here