Creation of the Week #46 David Calavitta's "Our Lady of the Lake" Branding

This brand project is amazing, but that's not the only reason why you should read this post. You should read it because the story of how this logo got made is hilarious. But first, let's talk about the project. 

The ministry was looking for a new brand that could connect the obvious water theme to the hip woodsy vibe that is the Lake Oswego/Portland area. Let's check out my brand success checklist to see if this brand accomplishes that mission:

1. It needs to reflect your organization’s "why" in a single simple form.

Single simple form: CHECK. The logo is a water droplet with the star of Bethlehem in the middle. This youth ministry leads people to God and does it in style.

2. It must be distinguishable in positive and negative. This necessitates the use of negative space.

CHECK. Aint no weird white space in the crevices. You can see through it. This makes a brand able to inhabit many spaces flexibly and look at home. 

3. It must be able to be represented in black and white

CHECK. If you can't recognize your logo's shape after layering over it with white or black, you need a new logo. This logo is SUPER simple, but bold and expressive in its simplicity.

4. It must be distinguishable at the size of a penny, and still look amazing blown up on a billboard

CHECK. This brand looks great at any size. Zoom in and zoom out in your browser and you'll still be able to see the shape and appreciate it. 

5. It must last for at least 20 years, but probably more.

CHECK. This brand is going to last a long time. It's not trying too hard, it's not just "trying to make Jesus fashionable. It comes from the heart of what the ministry is about and about the place in which the brand is situated. It says something enduring about the ministry in a flexible way that can be used in many contexts. For these reasons, this brand is going to have some serious staying power.

So now on to the story...

When I told David that I wanted to recognize this project on creation of the week and asked for the files, he sent me back the context in which this boss logo for our Lady of the Lake youth ministry in Lake Oswego, Oregon, was created. Here's what he shared:

Kind of a funny story with this. I'm friends with the new YM who commissioned me to do this branding. Coincidentally, I was also friends with the previous YM who commissioned me to make the ministry a logo about 6 years ago. The new YM had no idea that I made the branding that was in place. When he hit me up to create the new brand he told me that he needed a rush job and that "anything would be better than what they had." I started cracking up because he was ripping on my design AND because he was right, anything would be better than that. (It was a long time ago and I was really just starting out with any sort of logo design. It was decent at best for the era and the stipulations put on me at the time. Excuses, excuses...) So, being the good friend that I am, I egged him on

a little bit and asked to see the current logo. He finally sent it to me saying "It's cringeworthy, probably done on MS Paint." Haha, I lost it. After a few moments humorously bashing the logo I finally let him in on my joke and shamefully owned up to my poor design. I admitted that it was time for a much needed rebrand.

All in all, it was painfully funny to have to come face to face with my old design and someone's gut reaction about it. A good dose of humility. It was also really cool to have a chance to try to redeem my self a bit for it.

David, thank you for sharing such a humbling and hilarious moment for us all to enjoy and take in. If we could all be as humble and committed to honesty with our own work as you are the New Renaissance would be well on its way. Thanks for setting the bar high, both in your craft and also in your humility. 

Creation of the Week by Marcellino D'Ambrosio
Cofounder Catholic Creatives

Creation of the Week #45 Matthew Alderman's UW Catholic Center

Matthew Alderman joined the community last week and posted his designs for the University of Wisconson's Catholic Center. I'm curious how many of us promptly started researching graduate degrees there, because DAMN. This Church is going to be impressive. College students generally get the dregs in terms of Church architecture, but this is going to be an incredible gift to the students there and all of the surrounding neighborhood. I would travel at LEAST 45 minutes to go to mass in this building. 

I'm not an architect, so I do not have the credibility to critique this building from that field of competence, but I will say this: If our Churches look and feel like shopping malls, UFO's, or Unitarian Universalist "churches" our evangelization efforts will be sluggish and poor at best. Our experience of Mass is the PRIMARY place where we live out our faith. I'm becoming more and more convinced every Sunday that I go to mass that our parish buildings are the starting point for good liturgy.  Architecture affects absolutely everything. Have you ever been to a modern Church in the round where they tried to do Gregorian Chant? It falls on its face. Ever been to any of the Triduum floor at a church sanctuary with a carpeted floor and lit by floodlights? No matter how spiritually rich the liturgy is, if it is encased in a building that inherently contradicts the liturgy's meaning, it is going to feel empty. 

I'm not saying that God is not present or that the Priests holiness or the musician's prayer doesn't matter. I'm just saying that the experience of God will be greatly impaired when the building's grammar denies the truth that is present in the liturgy. 

That is why I'm so excited for to see the people at the University of Madison's Catholic Center investing so much into this beautiful architecture which speaks of God's grandeur and holiness, of the wonder of heaven, and the glory of the Paschal Mystery.  Matthew, great work. We're excited to see more!

Creation of the Week by Marcellino D'Ambrosio
CoFounder of Catholic Creatives

Creation of the Week #44 Fabiola Garza's "Coco"

One day I will stop fangirling over Fabi, but that day is not today. For those of you who don't know her, she works at Disney as an illustrator and also illustrated a children's book called "The Boy that became Pope" about the life of JP II that will make you cry. If you don't have it and have kids of the reading age, make that happen asap.

Last week the cover for the new Pixar book is dropped and guess who did the illustration for it? FABI. Yeah. And it's amazing.

The detail on this thing is incredible. I love how everything Fabi does looks like she captured it at the golden hour. It's all motion, light, and life. This cover captures that especially well. All of the lines in this image lead to Coco (presumably the boy?) and his dog, leading the eye towards his face and give us a feeling of some great and exciting adventure which awaits right off page.  Both characters are mid-stride, plunging into the leaves in a playful and excited gait. This scene could have so easily been so boring as to be stupefyingly bland: A boy with a guitar and a dog in Mexican town." Fabi, however, makes this scene extraordinary, magical, and full of emotion. I love it. Fabi, we're proud of you! Keep repping Jesus out there in the real world by being amazing at what you do.
 

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By Marcellino D'Ambrosio

CoFounder of Catholic Creatives
Michief Maker at Sherwood Fellows

Creation of the Week #43 Creation of the Week Diego Diaz' Augustinian Recollects Branding

Good design is universal.

As Catholics, we believe that beauty isn’t simply a matter of how you grew up, what age group you fit into, and what language you speak. There is a subjective experience that you bring to the table every time you see or hear art or music, but there is something objective to art.

That is the standpoint from which I want to approach Diego Diaz’ branding project for the Augustinian Recollects. It is a significant work. It is deeply meaningful in its symbolism, very attractive even on first glance, and easily recognizable in all its forms. Any American high school kid would scroll up on Instagram, give it a double tap and call it a day. But Diego Diaz didn’t design this for American kids. He designed it for an order of Augustinians in Panama, the Dominican Republic, and Guatemala.

Don’t get me wrong, I definitely believe that our culture hugely influences the way we look at art and this is especially true of branding. Just look at the way that people experience soda differently when they are shown it’s a coke. That said, design principles are part of the practical reality of composition. Certain color combinations look better. Whether you’re from Nigeria or from Scandinavia, the color wheel still applies. Contrast matters to anyone that can see, taste, or hear or feel. The Golden Ratio works every time whether you intend to use it or just happen to use it because it’s a part of nature. There are some objective rules that govern what we find beautiful and what we find inauthentic and ugly. I think Diego, along with many other designers in the community from South America show just how universal excellence in design really is.

Diego’s site says that he designed this identity to represent St. Augustine's charism, “the search for truth, service to the community, and the love for God without conditions. Colors and aesthetics are linked to the cultural identity that's manifested in each flag of the province's nations.”  In addition, he writes about how the search for truth and the church mission part was associated with exploration, which leads them to draw inspiration from maps and compasses.

Here are the criteria by which I judge a logo’s success or failure:

1. It needs to reflect your organization’s "why" in a single, simple form.

2. It must be distinguishable in positive and negative. This necessitates the use of negative space.

3. It must be able to be represented in black and white.

4. It must be distinguishable at the size of a penny, and still look amazing blown up on a billboard.

5. It must last for at least 10 years, but probably more.

I think it’s safe to say Diego achieves each of these marks. Everything about this brand conveys energy, exploration, and friendliness while saying at the same time “take me seriously, I’m legit.” It speaks to the core values of the religious order and incarnates their "why" effectively. It has great contrast so it looks good in positive and negative and works in black and white. It’s simple and balanced, so it preserves its effectiveness no matter what size you view it at. It’s elegant and fashionable, not simply trendy, so it'll last for many years with a minimal need to update. 

Keep rocking and rolling, Diego. You make us all proud to be Catholic by doing great design, brother. Keep it up!

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By Marcellino D'Ambrosio

CoFounder of Catholic Creatives
CoFounder of Sherwood Fellows

Creation of the Week #42 Therese Bussen's NFP in Real Life

“In honor of NFP Awareness Week, which begins July 23, let’s talk about sex.”

— Therese Bussen

What a great way to start an article! Bravo, Therese. For those of you who don’t know Therese, she’s a journalist at Denver Catholic. She used to blog for FOCUS and was known for her authentic, vulnerable writing. She has a knack for taking conversations that are simmering on the periphery and bringing them into the forefront of Catholic conversation.

That’s why I picked this article. It’s not necessarily the most personally vulnerable or edgy piece I’ve ever read on NFP, but it is the first honest article that wrestles with the lived experience of NFP I’ve read by a Diocesan news outlet.

I believe that the Church is entering a new season in its life. For lack of better terminology, I’ll call it the post-Culture War Era. For the last half century, the Church in America has been fighting the Culture War. We’ve been primarily concerned with defending the faith, and doing so through politics and apologetics. There is a place for both in the life of the Church, but they were over-emphasized to the detriment of the lived experience of discipleship.

We fought tooth and nail to prove to Protestants and the rest of the world that we were right and they were wrong, never mind the fact that the music at our parish is terrible, the architecture is laughable, the homilies are boring and unrelatable, and that our parishioners are leaving in droves. We would cover over these things by saying things like: “If people just understood the mass better, the mass would stop being boring.” I’ve been Catholic my whole life and was raised by a theologian. Sometimes mass is boring, and when that happens, it’s usually because the liturgy was unintentional and bland, not because I didn’t know enough about transubstantiation. The post-Culture War Church is pausing for a second and wondering why our arguments aren’t being effective. It’s a great opportunity to take a good hard look at our reflection in the mirror. We’re haggard, wrinkled, disheveled, and look like we haven’t showered in 2000 years.

We got so caught up in arguing that we lost our ability to look at ourselves and acknowledge the messiness of Catholicism’s lived experience. Thankfully, this is changing.

It’s changing because modern man doesn’t want perfect, white-washed, meticulously proven facts anymore. The culture has changed. After a couple centuries of massively up-heaving warfare, industrialization, globalization, the internet, and big marketing, we’ve grown disillusioned with our rational ability to understand and be sure of anything. We’ve come into contact with a rich diversity of beliefs, a multitude of contrary ideas and thoughts. We are suspicious of every message, and test its perceived value not by the air tightness of its argument, but by the authenticity of its bearer.

Struggling with our faith, and showing that struggle is actually what humanity in the post-Culture War Era is looking for.
Those who try to live NFP in their marriages struggle. That’s the truth. We have to be OK with showing that, or else we will have NO credibility with a world who’s done with perfection. We have to show our wrestling so that those of us who struggle don’t feel like we’re alone. We have to show it so that we can give others insight into the actual lived actions and perspectives that can carry us through their own trials.

That’s why I love that Therese Bussen is willing to go there and open up the conversation to the Diocese of Denver and to the rest of the world.

Keep on wrestling with the reality of the lived gospel, Therese. You are giving us all a voice.

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By Marcellino D'Ambrosio

CoFounder of Catholic Creatives
Michief Maker at Sherwood Fellows

Creation of the Week #41 Father Tansi's Garden

This has been a hard past few weeks. I've been wrestling with deep dissatisfaction with myself. I've been drinking from the barrel of self doubt and just trying to see if it has a bottom. It doesn't.

There are times when I really don't want to face the world, and times when I want to face this community even less, when I open a fresh Google Doc and stare at it for an hour and hit the backspace more than any other key. Today is a day like that.

I've been listening to Fr. Tansi's record, Garden, and I've really needed it. It's been speaking to me in some vulnerable places and I can't say thank you enough to Fr. Tansi and to all of the people at Renewal in Motion who were a part of making it happen. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. You were there for me today. 

I feel like Fr. Tansi is opening up a secret door into the garden of his own prayer, into his dialogue with a God who loves him, who's proud of him, and who is eminently present. Especially in "Rising," and "Rest." Often when I'm struggling to believe that about God and about myself, the pathway out has been encountering God's love through someone else's invitation into their own experience of the Divine. 

Garden is a work that does that for me. It's not just the arrangements, the vocals, the melody, the instrumentation...all of these are worthy of recognition. It's the heart that's behind it all.

It's beautiful in every way. Even the album art, which was done by Daniela Madriz, one of my personal heroes. 

Thanks again to you guys at Renewal in Motion for being so awesome. We love you guys!

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By Marcellino D'Ambrosio

CoFounder of Catholic Creatives
Michief Maker at Sherwood Fellows

Creation of the Week #40 Glass Canvas' Anthem Philly Rebrand

There have not been many moments in my life where my jaw has literally dropped in amazement after perusing a Catholic ministry's website.  Last week when Anthem Philly went live, I stared at my screen for at least 4:33 seconds in disbelief.

These were the thoughts that ran through my mind when I saw this:

"This is Catholic?! THERE'S NO WAY!"

"When is my Diocese going to let me do something like this?"

"Who did this?... of course. Glass Canvas. Of course it was."

"I can not believe Bishop Chaput let them do this!"

Then I looked at the blog titles and my jaw dropped even further. At this point, I'm pretty sure I could have swallowed my desktop whole.

"I don't have my {poop emoji} together?" EDGY, Anthem Philly, edgy. Did you think I would fall for that click bait? DID YOU?
Well. I did. And I read the whole thing, which I NEVER do.

As you can tell, I think this brand the good people at Anthem Philly have adopted is freaking fantastic and puts every other diocesan rebrand I've ever seen to shame. Let me tell you two reasons why:

1. Clarity

They've clearly defined what their mission is, and who it's to.  At least 75% of the effort in my ministry when I was a youth minister was wasted because of a lack of clarity. I don't think it's just conjecture to say that most other ministries suffer from the same thing. We have bake sales that take a week to prep and raise $80, we have 3 retreats a year, a mission trip, Steubenville Conferences and DCYC's, small group ministries, discipleship programs....etc. We try to reach out to parents, to young adult core members, to punks, gangsters, bro's, and homeschooled Catholics and every other category of kid. I learned the hard way: when we try to make our ministries relevant to everyone, instead we make them relevant to no one. 

Generally, I've found that the more responsibility an organization has, the less clarity it operates with. Diocesan ministries, then, are some of the worst offenders in this category. They often don't know if they are trying to minister to the ministers or directly to the youth themselves. They don't know if they should fade into the background or lead the charge, going back and forth between the two.

Anthem Philly, on the other hand, knows EXACTLY who they are trying to reach.
Check out their brand manifesto.

Anthem Philly is calling young people back into belonging in the Church. That means they need to brand themselves in a way that they will be seriously considered by those who do NOT feel they belong in the Church. In doing so, Anthem is waving the banner for the whole Diocese, giving vision and setting the example for all of them.

I also love the language they use on their about page:
"It’s our passion to see youth ministers killin’ it in their roles serving the youth in Philly. We provide training and support to make sure they get the encouragement and backup they need."

Youth & Young Adult ministers are not known for being buttoned up professorial types. It usually takes someone who is pretty rough around the edges to dive into ministry. This site isn't speaking some political diocesan jargon or high-minded systematic theology. They are speaking the down to earth, rough around the edges language that youth & young adult ministers ACTUALLY USE. The tone so many ministers get from their Diocesan office says: "We're here to tell you what to do." In using this language and brand, Anthem Philly is saying: "We love you, we get you, and we want to help."

2. Raw, authentic outreach.

All too often, in ministry, we hide our true selves behind teaching, behind scripture, behind everyone else's story but our own for fear of being vulnerable or "making the ministry about us." It's the absolute worst thing we could ever do. Used car salesmen do the same thing. They'll tell you everything there is to know about that car they're trying to sell you. They'll tell you about how awesome you'll feel driving this model and sing its praises to high heaven. Have they ever driven it themselves? No. Would they ever buy it themselves? Hell no.

Jesus came and testified to the one who had sent him. Then he sent his disciples to do the same thing. We were sent to bear witness to Him who we know personally, not sell young people a set of doctrines that will make their lives better. In an age that is increasingly cynical about religion, the only chance we have to the younger generations is to speak to them from personal experience, to witness to the God who saved us from our own desperate struggle. 

This is why Anthem's brand is so amazing. It's gritty, It's real, and It's going to speak deeply to the audience they've targeted. 

Bravo, Anthem Philly. Good work. We hope many more Dioceses will notice and follow suit. 

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By Marcellino D'Ambrosio

CoFounder of Catholic Creatives
Creative Director of Sherwood Fellows
 

Creation of the Week #40 Madi Myers-Cook's Portraits of Rwanda

Some of the best art created by humanity was made to show the nobility of a people often seen as sub-par or helpless. Madi's recent project, Portraits of Rwanda, is one such as this. 

When we think of Africa, the images that often come to mind are images of helpless children covered in flies, or of women, bare breasted with a hopeless stare. We think of the ads we've seen from countless NGOs and non-profits asking us for resources to solve hunger once and for all. 

Though none of these organizations intend to give us the impression that all Africans are helpless and in need of the salvation we wealthy and wise Westerners bring, that can be the unintended result. This, my friends, is a terrible brand issue that needs to be resolved. Part of returning dignity to the poor is returning their dignity. This means believing in them to accomplish great things the way our God always has.

ENTER MADI MYERS-COOK

Madi went to Rwanda to tell the stories of women rising above poverty and their past to be entrepreneurs and chase their own dreams. She did this not by bringing financial relief, but by giving the gift that she did have, the same gift Peter gave to the cripple at the temple - the Holy Spirit working through her.

In her portraits, you can see the nobility of each person shot, the passion, the joy, the strength, the life present in each face. It takes a special gift to bring out the true heart of a person and capture it in a moment. Madi has that gift in abundance. I'm super excited to see more from her, and I especially hope that she writes about the project so that we can see more.

Be sure to check out Madi's Instagram account for more photos and details about each shot.

This Creation of the Week is by Marcellino D'Ambrosio
Creative Director at Sherwood Fellows

Creation of the Week #39 Imagine Sisters by Dan & Christina Rogers

“And as we ask God – “What is it that you have created me for?” – we pause for a moment and listen for the whisper: “Can you imagine?”

— Imagine Sisters

Imagine Sisters was one of the first Catholic media movements I ever saw that truly impressed me. I remember seeing it for the first time and being so amazed at the simplicity of the idea and its impact. Instead of arguing people into an appreciation of the religious vocation, they just showed it. They shared photos of sisters in authentic, beautiful, and joyful moments, and that was enough. It had a huge impact on religious vocations in the US, and now it's back.

Thanks to Dan & Christina Rogers of Avenue Creative, Imagine Sisters 2.0 is here, and it's amazing for all of the same reason it always was-  it's showing, not telling. 

Every photo on this site displays beautiful young women in love with their vocation and their commitment to Christ. It feels alive and joyful, it beacons but never begs for attention. The website is well thought out, never being pushy, but always giving the visitor calls to action that leads deeper into an encounter with the feminine religious vocation. 

The amount of work that it must have taken to relaunch this apostolate in these new, beautiful garments must have been astounding. Especially the full-length documentary "the Light of Love," which is just as intentional and professionally created as everything else Dan & Christina do.  

Just to show the reach that this movement already has, look at the numbers they are boasting.

This goes to show the impact that professional media can have when it is used to reveal God's love to the world in the faces and story's of his children, but I have a feeling that Imagine Sisters is just getting started. 

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This Creation of the Week is brought to you by Marcellino D'Ambrosio of Sherwood Fellows.

Creation of the Week #38 Ryan Stout's Arsenal Kickstarter

For those of you who didn't see this, Ryan Stout raised just short of 1,000,000 on his kickstarter since posting on Show Off Tuesday two weeks ago. What was his kickstarter for? Well. Watch the video and check 'er out.

Ryan made Arsenal, which is a pretty incredible piece of technology.

"Arsenal is the world’s first intelligent assistant for DSLR and mirrorless cameras. Ultralight hardware lets you wirelessly control your camera with an intuitive iOS or Android app. And advanced machine learning algorithms help you get the perfect shot every time."

It's auto everything from 100 feet away with your smart phone. It's amazing.

"Set the shutter speed, aperture, and ISO, see a live preview, and trigger the shutter from your smartphone."

It does HDR photo stacking & Focus Stacking for you with no photoshop layering required. 

If these aren't the most sureal timelapses you've ever seen, point me to what you've got because I've never seen anything like this:

Ryan Made an amazing product, displayed and documented what it could do super effectively, and priced them at unbelievably reasonable prices. We don't have to be making Catholic art to make the world a more awesome place to live. Ryan. Way to add some more magic to the universe. If you are a photographer, get Arsenal. Let's help Ryan break 1,000,000!
 

Creation of the Week #38 Jesse Weiler's Massive Reach

How many of you guys have gotten 1 million impressions with a $20 boost?

Running social posting on facebook is one of the most effective ways to communicate with an audience, but none of us are doing it like Jessie Weiler, who recently did exactly that with the simple meme he designed for Liturgy Memes.  I get excited when someone shares one of my posts 100 times. This post he did has a wopping 7,670 shares as of 11pm, May 22nd.

Sometimes those of us who design cool images and shoot awesome videos don't give enough credit as a group to those of you out there who do the work of actually getting those things in front of people. It's a tough gig and it's one that takes a lot of learning. If you want to know how it's done, hit up Jessie on the slack or on facebook. Jessie runs the social pages for the Liturgical Institute, and he has some of the biggest numbers in the game for a grassroots Catholic Organization. If you want to know one of Jessies secrets for massively growing your reach, check out the blogpost he wrote "How to Get More Likes on Facebook"  here.

So here's to you guys out there who are determined to get your facebook adds down to below a $1 a click rate. Here's to you who spend hours creatively defining audiences. Here's to you scientists of the online continent. Here's to you, Jessie Weiler.

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Written By Marcellino D'Ambrosio
Creative Director @ Sherwood Fellows
{Photo Cred - Jonathan Weiss, One Secret Mission}

Creation of the Week #37 World Youth Day's Logo Rethought - Wesley Bancroft

“ If you’re explaining, you’re losing.”

— Ronald Reagan

In the forum we had a lively discussion about the new World Youth Day logo. I will try to pull together a longer blog compiling some of the comments for later discussion. For now, suffice it to say that the consensus was that it's too complicated. It's trying to pack too many different images into one, such that each image added actually makes it more convoluted and subtracts from the overall cohesion of the whole logo. It makes each image more difficult to make out and comprehend. Thus, the need for the logo explanation.  In the words of Joe Marshall: "If you have to explain a logo you're losing."

But we would be remiss if we didn't give any ideas for improvement, which is why Wesley Bancroft, one of the most amazing brand designers in the country spent a couple hours this afternoon playing with a new concept. In his words, this image is "just a rough concept on how you can appropriate the culture where WYD is happening and encapsulate the Universal aspect of the Church at the same time." 

"It Harkens the Panamanian Native Patterns, including the Aztec and Loom patterns. All of the other Catholic motifs are obvious. The patterns are a dynamic system both in the typography and the mark. Here is a rough idea for how you could make the brand unique and dynamic utilizing Native and Ancient patterns of Central America. The  mark on the left could be a globe, a host, or the four-corners of the earth. Each unique pattern in the positive space also represents how each of us is unique but unified."

**Reference the one above to see how the brand architecture could be dynamic and differing with each application:**

Wesley wanted me to make sure that it's clear that this is just a grayscale concept and not intended to be a working mark. Ether way, though, Wesley, you are a genius. Let's hope they ask you to do the next World Youth Day brand. We'll all keep our fingers crossed. For those of you who would like to see more from Wesley, check out his portfolio. If you REALLY want to get your mind blown, go to our patreon, support the community, and listen to Wesley's talk that he gave at the Summit on branding. It was a serious game changer.

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Creation of the Week #36 Patrick Thomas' Easter Vigil

Patrick Thomas' photos of the Easter Vigil at his parish are stunning. To say they got their monies worth hiring to take shots of their Vigil liturgy would be an understatement. You can be a master of the trade with all of the best equipment, but without a worthy subject matter, these skills mean little. Patrick Thomas did an amazing job capturing the event, but what subject matter he had to work with! The vision that these shots portray of the Church shows a universal Church that is alive, vibrant, and solemn. I get the sense that I'm watching a clandestine celebration of the early Church, where the people came from every race and nation to a secret and solemn ritual. It's beautiful and intriguing. Great work, Thomas. 

This Creation of the Week is by Marcellino D'Ambrosio of Sherwood Fellows

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Catholic Creatives just shared our vision to bring more value to the community and give you guys the opportunity to partner with us as we work to bring about a New Renaissance in Catholic art, innovation, and creativity. 

Creation of the Week #35 Cameron Smith's Resurection of the Body

I love Cameron Smith's work. It's a marriage of surrealist and realistic inspirations, patterns and figures, bright and subdued colors, and modern and classical expression. This kind of this is often done in Graphic design where images are easily cut from backgrounds and patterns are easily layered, but I've never seen someone combine so many seemingly disparate contrasts in single fine art paintings. Cameron Smith does it with such tactile beauty that it makes me want to put down the mouse and pick up a brush.

The Ressurection of the Body

I thought it fitting to post this as we conclude the Easter octave, looking forward to our own resurrection. What a beautiful belief, that we profess as Catholics, that the body is not a thing we have, but it is us, and it is good. I feel the goodness of the body in Cameron's painting. This is the kind of art we need to be making, the kind that expresses the goodness and beauty of truth in a way that can be touched and experienced by the world.

Here's another one of Cameron's paintings for your inspiration. Thanks for creating this week! Keep on it brother! 

Fountain Blue

You can find Cameron's FB page here.

Creation of the Week this week by Marcellino D'Ambrosio of Sherwood Fellows

Creation of the Week #34 The Bible Project

A while back my son just sort of yells across the living room without warning or prompting:

"Dad, what does 'messiah' mean? - Kolbe

"Me in my mind: Where do I begin? ... Do I jump to Judaism? That would make sense... do I hand him my Scott Hahn collection? Too early... ]

No... like any good dad with a wifi connection, I turn to YouTube. We then proceed to spend about 45 minutes sitting on the couch together, me and my little 4 year old son watching these videos and talking about what was uncovered. Mostly we talked about what he saw, not so much what he heard in the narraration.

"Is that solider a bad guy or a good guy?"

"Is that guy an angel?"

"Can we go to that castle (the temple) sometime, maybe this summer?"

Kolbe just needed to see it first, and I think part of me did too.

Enter the The Bible Project, Creation of the Week and a Portland based non-profit crowd funded creative studio. It's been great to see the group progress from the early videos to the most recently published ones, and to see the quality constantly increase, and the willingness to try new things pay off with each new graphic venture. Everything they make they give away for free, though if you offer your dollar bills I'm certain they won't turn them down. This creation of the week is really dozens of "creations" that are summarized in this one post. Mostly the following:

1. Theme videos (holiness, image of God, Kingdom of God, Dozens of others on YouTube)
2. Podcast
3. Animated short films (Wisdom, Torah)
4. Print Materials (A few dozen large format posters)

The work really stands on it's own (see screen captures of the animated films below) and needs little in the way of explaining. It is just top to bottom thoroughly engaging and rooted in the narrative arcs of scripture. It's well worth your time to sit, watch, and then share these videos. 

the garden of eden

king david

the crucifixion

some sort of badass soldier... maybe the COTW should have been swords, or zombie horses.

The videos have been personally helpful to me because there is a significant gap between what my 4 year old can glean from his "kid bibles" and my Ignatius Press "full bible". And if we are being honest, they help kick start us into reading and loosen whatever grip lethargy may have on our hearts and minds. That's what engaging works of art do, they clue us in to something of the clarity of the truth, something that may not be as readily expressible with words, or certainly not in the say way that an image can. With hundreds of instantly made and intuitively felt design decisions layered on top of one another to produce an affect that washes over the viewer,  works of art like these operate on a different level that that of those who deal in words. 

All of these resources mix an exceptionally high level of production quality, with what seem to be a fairly open and approachable theological bent. The printed material is also all free and super high quality. Dig it. Download any and all of the artwork, and if you can support the effort. 

The best part of this CoTW is that it has given me cause to return to these books to be able to enter into these stories anew. I hope it will result in the same for you.

enjoy.

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This Creation of the Week is by Christopher Duffel, architect, father, and sharer of wisdom. 

Creation of the Week #33 The Catholic Woman - Corynne

“Friend, I am so happy you are here. Please know that you are infinitely valued and that the Church needs you.”

— Corynne of The Catholic Woman

The Catholic Woman is a ministry that seeks to illustrate the many faces and vocations of Catholic women. They publish letters group members write to one another every week.

Check out this video they did on Artistry & Motherhood. IT'S SO GOOD.

I love this ministry for many reasons. Their design is beautiful and smart, their content is so vulnerable, their Facebook and Instagram are active and incredibly consistent. These are all hard things to pull off for any ministry and they make The Catholic Woman stand apart, but these reasons aren't why I love what they are doing. It goes much deeper than that.

Why I Love TCW

I can't write this feature from the standpoint that many of you could. I can only write from my own experience as a man growing up in a Church that I felt didn't understand me. It took a long time for me to find my place with Her. I believe gender is one of the most difficult topics for any of us to touch on because our deepest wounds lie in deep recesses of our identity as men and women. Our scars, the lies the evil one speaks over us, tend to tie themselves to our conceptions not of ourselves as people, but ourselves as a man or a woman. 

When I was in high school, I thought I wanted to be a priest and applied to be a seminarian for the Diocese of Dallas. I was rejected because I wasn't "pastoral enough," that is to say that I was clearly not going to grow up to be a docile bank manager. I challenged authority, pushed the boundaries of acceptable behavior wherever I was and did not have a diplomatic bone in my body. Throughout my life, I've been diagnosed, medicated, scolded punished for my boyness. In my mind, this diocesan vocations committee brought all of the weight of the Magisterium to bear in its prognosis of my lack of a "pastoral disposition" 

When I finally was accepted and sent to St. John Vianney seminary, I found a Church that had an entirely different image of Masculinity that I was compelled to pursue. "The Vianney man," as they say, was clearly German. He was on time, he was disciplined, he read St. Thomas Aquinas, had played football or baseball in high school, and never displayed emotion in public. He was some strange Frankenstein of the ideal red-blooded American male and JPII's theology of the body. He was all of these things, but most of all, he was not me, and I knew it the second I was fraternally corrected for singing too high during mass because we all know that if you sing a high C you are probably just waiting for the right time to come out of the closet. 

Belonging

The point I'm making is that we all have felt at times like we've had to hide who we really are in order to fit some idealized image of what our gender should look like. I love the way God has called me to manhood, but the road that got me here has been long, winding, and riddled with potholes. Often times, what I needed the most on the journey was simply to be told that I belonged. 

That's why I'm so grateful for what Corynne is doing with The Catholic Woman. Even if she isn't intending to minister to me, she has simply by offering everyone who comes to her site to freedom to be where they are at. Thank you Corynne, thank you for your beautiful ministry. Keep it up.

 by Marcellino D'Ambrosio,
One of those crazy Catholic Creatives

Creation of the Week #32 Totus Tuus Oklahoma Rebrand - Y&YA Office of Tulsa

I have to confess that this project is one that I had a hand in. Anthony Kaiser, the head hancho over there in the Y&YA office of Tulsa asked our agency (Sherwood Fellows) to help rebrand Totus Tuus Oklahoma in a hurry. As soon as I got off the phone, I hit up Daniella Madriz because she's amazing and we went for it. The end product was not only a killer look, but a much more profound understanding of what makes Totus Tuus special. Take a look through this brand guide that Daniella created to show the client how to use the brand. 

The goal of this rebranding was to attract more prospective teachers and give them the sense that Totus Tuus is a legitimate way to spend a summer in building the kingdom. The twelve stars are the stars of Mary pointing at the crown of Christ. The brand relies heavily on blues and golds to tie in the Marian theme subtly. Daniella kills it all the time, but this was such a slam dunk I had to put it out there.

Hat's off to Anthony Kaiser over there for leading the charge in getting Totus Tuus rebranded. I hope that more Dioceses follow your lead so that the program grows. Next, hopefully someone will make a website for Totus Tuus that I'm not embarrased to link to. 

Creation of the Week #31 "Rising" by Spirit Juice and the CFR's

First off, I want to give some mad props to all of the awesome music/video collaborations that have been happening over the last year, but I'm just so pumped by this new trend. The Vigil Project was huge in making that a thing, and I'm excited to see more artist/film maker teams make more of these.

Now can I just talk about how awesome it is to  see Fransciscan Friars worshiping with LEGIT original music? A lot of times art that priests and religious make can be over celebrated simply because of the novelty that is associated with a priest making art, which is why "Rising" struck me. I would have loved this song regardless of who wrote it. The lyrics are simple, but profound, the instrumentation is dynamic and open, and the spirit behind it full of worship and intimacy. The fact that it was the CFR's makes it just icing on top instead of the predominate reason for the enjoyment.

Also,  it's  awesome to see the diversity present in the group. A lot of times our Catholic art can just come off as a bit on the white side. This is just not a problem for the CFR's, is it?  

As for the Video, there's just something so beautiful about the way the Spirit Juice team has  of celebrating music and submerging you in whatever song they are filming. The lighting in this video makes me feel like I'm waking up just as the dark is fading at the sky's edges. I think this particular shine that Spirit Juice has with music comes from Rob Kaczmark's own passion for music and history, which he talks about in our podcast here.

If you haven't seen the video they did with Fr. Pontifex, it's one of my favorite music videos ever and is very fitting for Lenten meditation.

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This blog is by Marcellino D'Ambrosio, CoFounder of Catholic Creatives and Principle at Sherwood Fellows, an agency dedicated to anointing new Davids in their fight against Goliath.

Creation of the Week #30 Brian Holdsworth's Logo Project

For those of you who don't know Brian, he's an awesome dude with a lot of insight. His youtube channel is really interesting, and his web/identity design agency has done some really big work like the Fishers Net Awards. We did a podcast with him here.

Brian did some pretty groundbreaking work on this logo mockup, and I say that for the following reason:

 Heraldry is super Catholic, but we haven't adapted it to the digital age.

The coat of arms was the original logo. It was the way we communicated the essential identity of organizations, always painted big and huge and intricate on shields, walls, and banners. It spoke in a language of symbols that was common and understood by all. Now a few hundred years later we're in the digital age, the age where logos are generally represented in tiny corners of webpages and printed on the corner of fliers in black and white. The banners that we rally behind now are logos, and those logos have to be used in a few different ways:

• It needs to reflect your organization’s why in a single simple form.
• It must be distinguishable in positive and negative. This necessitates the use of negative space.
• It must be able to be represented in black and white
• It must be distinguishable at the size of a penny, and still look amazing blown up on a billboard
• It must last for at least 20 years, but probably more.

The rest of the world has generally caught up to these needs, but Catholic Dioceses never got the memo. Here's what most Dioceasan logos look like:
 

Here's what it would look like in a single color if it was on a poster we designed for Exalt, a young adult group in Dallas:
 

What's amazing about this is that the "Exalt" logo is actually SMALLER than the diocesan logo, the diocesan logo is unreadable at this size. Heraldry is still rich and amazing, but it needs to be done differently in order to work as a logo. 

That's why I love what Brian did with his. It works at small sizes, but looks awesome blown up, and it's easily viewed in greyscale. This is his logo used in the same poster at close to the same size as New York's.

Brian, you win again. Good work man.

Creation of the Week #29 Ryan McQuade's Lent Companion

Welcome to Creation of the Week, where we usually feature one of the members of the group and their recent work. I say "usually," because this time, though I am featuring a group member, I'm also making a case for two of our favorite punching bags: postmodernism and minimalism.

Many times we look at modern genre as Catholics and we criticize it is fadish. We see genre as the lesser artist's crutch, pedantic and needlessly the same. This is certainly true of many "artists" who shock their soulless audiences out of numbness by sheer virtue of their novelty. I do not think this is an accurate assessment of modern genre as a whole, however. 

It is, in my view, much more like an economy, a massively complex cultural conversation. The modern artist hangs their piece onto genre's art gallery where each piece speaks to the others in open dialogue and sometimes in fiery argument. For the Catholic artist, to enter into genre is to speak eternal truth in a language that the modern heart can receive it.

This is precisely what T.S . Eliot did in his poem "The Wasteland." He uses modernism's own genre to point out its emptiness. 

“What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water.”

— T.S. Elliot - The Waste Land

Ryan does something very similar with LifeTeen's Lenten companion. He employs the language of minimalism to speak to the unchurched teen of what is truly essential.  He carries the very ethos of Lent in the charcoals and whites. The simple clear type set on the dark background speaks of drama and tragedy. As a whole when I look at this piece, I hear the words in my heart: "memento mori."

Ryan, don't listen to the naysayers that tell you to stop being so modern. You keep doing what you're doing brother. Your target audience isn't the intellectually formed Catholic anyway, is it?