Creation of the Week #7 American Bible Society's "Pilgrimage App"

We’ve been waiting for so long, suffering under the yoke of crappy ux, bearing with silent desperation stretched saint pictures, and expectantly yearning for interfaces that don’t look like they were designed by the same secretary that did our bulletins.

Pamela, could you make that Douay-Rheims Bible Icon "Pop" More?

My friends. That day has finally come.

PILGRIMAGE HAS ARRIVED

Here are the reasons why I've decided to spend valuable phone gigs on a Catholic app:

INTUITIVE INTERFACE

The app has a really awesome interface that reacts to movement and feels on par with all of the other apps on my desktop. *gasp* The photos actually MOVE when you slide your thumb down. The navigation makes sense, almost as if THEY ACTUALLY  TESTED IT! Imagine that. 

VR

I still would have switched Laudate out for Pilgrimage if it hadn't been for this, but not only did this app liberate me from my reliance on Laudate for the daily readings, but it also TOOK CATHOLICISM INTO VIRTUAL REALITY!

World Youth Day closing ceremonies. Holy Mass celebrated by Pope Francis. Broadcast Live in 360˚ Virtual Reality.

I hope that VR will soon be used by Catholic innovators for more than just 360 shots of masses and performances, but this is an amazing start. Imagine what could be done. A LEGIT, LIFE LIKE, 360° PASSION PLAY IN THE HOLY LAND? 

There are not enough caps to express my excitement, so I will continue on.

FEATURES

Pilgrimage gamifies spiritual growth in a great non cheesy way and gives you measurable goals for prayer journaling, gives you great personalized content, and allows you to keep each other accountable in a group. Which, BTW. You want in on the Catholic Creatives Pilgrimage group? Drop our group ID in there (44B) and BOOM, instant accountability.

PRO LANDING PAGE

The landing page for it is on par with any other pro designed landing page and focuses on the selling points with great photography and video (maybe a little cheesy on the voice over, but we’ll forgive them that one small detail.)

The one thing that I just can’t figure out how to line up is that they list the USCCB as a partner. They must have tricked the bishops into approving it by showing them a layout that had the divine mercy image as the background and only used clipart as icons, then switched it out with the awesome version after approval and said “Oh, we can’t change it now!”

Way to go American Bible Society, better to ask for forgiveness than permission, #amiright?

Props to group member Zach Hunter for his work on the project and getting the word out to the group about it.

Creation of the Week #6 Kate Capato's Misericordiae Invitatio

““We believe that the greatest force of evangelization and social change in our world is beauty. We believe that Catholicism is the most beautiful framework for understanding and expressing the human experience... we just need to pursue our craft with excellence. Anything less compromises our passion, erodes our credibility, and dulls the vibrancy of our Catholic vision.””

This week, we have  opted to feature this oil piece by Kate Capato, firstly, because we are deeply proud when any of our members creates with this level of craftmanship, and secondly, it clearly demonstrates the values that we aspire to as a community. Last week, we made a post in the slack channel and in the Facebook group about the purpose of our community- the quote above is an excerpt  from that post. We want to encourage every artist to avoid accepting low standards for their work, but to aspire to nothing short of excellence. Misericordiae Invitatio  is the clearly fruit of such a pursuit of mastery. 

I would imagine that it would be very difficult to look at this painting and to not be moved to curiosity, if not awe, at its message.  The combination of a beautifully executed realism with a traditional presentation of sacred art creates an almost fantastic surrealism that allows the symbols speak while also making them accessible. I, for one, very rarely expect religious art to be innovative or relevant. If I am told that I am about to be shown contemporary religious art, I usually grit my teeth and prepare to give disingenuous compliments. This piece, (and others done by other members of the group) has proven that with superb craftmanship and a bit of creativity, an artist can reimagine entire genres of art and breathe life into art  forms which were left for dead in the wake of the modernist aesthetic.

We encourage all artists in this group to pursue their craft with as much love and passion that Kate Kapato did in this painting.

 In the words of the author, "Misericordiae Invitatio: Oil on Canvas. 4.9 ft by 3.2 ft 2016, was recently completed in response to the Year of Mercy and the Theology of The Body messages. The Latin title, Misericordiae Invitatio, translates to Invitation of Mercy. This painting aims at pulling the viewer outside of time."

Creation of the Week #5 Erica Tighe's Calligraphy

I just want to push us right now to all think a little bit more like Erica Tighe.

I for one feel the struggle of being in a creative industry and trying to make ends meet. I fall into mental traps all the time. “No one wants to pay for good design, it’s just not valued,” or “I didn’t get started early enough, I never went to school for this…” and other stupid bs like that. While I’m making excuses for myself, struggling to figure out what to do, Erica is over here making things. 

I don’t want to make any assumptions here about Erica’s financial position, but I can say this: Erica has a lot more chances that I’ll give her my money than I have of her returning the favor. Why? Because she’s creating products.

Part of the creative gift is the ability to see things that could be that aren’t, coupled with the willingness to do something about it. Erica is not only one of the people responsible for the amazing visuals for “Blessed is She,” (Client Work) but she has recently put up a calligraphy class on skillshare (Teaching), has an online store with 30 products in it, and just to get at the rest of the 2 percent of us that didn’t already feel like total peons by now, she just released these ridiculously great Catholic Saint Peg Dolls on Envato (Products).

People, there are a lot of ways to make money with our craft, and client work is only one of them. I would love to see the people on this group take a page out of Erica’s calligraphy book and create PRODUCTS with their skills. Good work Erica. Way to inspire us and make us feel totally insufficient at the same time.  

Ps. If you need a store to sell your new products on, www.PetersSquare.com is the new cool hip place to be.

Creation of the Week #2: Daniela's "Wheelock Wildcats Rebrand"

For those of you that have not had the pleasure to meet the illustrious Daniela Madriz, now's the time. Daniela does fantastic work. She really knows her way around illustration and branding, but one of the things that makes her special is her finesse. 
 

Designers don't smile.

Daniela knows that branding is about so much more than designing a killer logo. From the way she discusses money, to how she selects color palates, all the way to how she delivers a brand guide. More on that later.

This is her redesign of the Wheelock Wildcat's logo:

Overview

Problem: The curve makes the name difficult to read and gives it a droopy, almost silly feeling.
Solution: The new logo takes the eye from left to right emphasizing movement.

Problem: The old wildcat is hard to discifer. I first thought it was a Chinese dragon. Mascot logos that try to show too much detail usually make the mark more difficult to understand, not less.
Solution:  The new mark is far simpler, relying on the "wildcats" in the name to give the animal its context. 

Problem: Too much detail makes display complicated. The first logo would be incredibly difficult to display on anything but gymn walls and hoodies. Today, logos need to be even more flexible than ever before, from the corner of iphone screens to building inscriptions. For the old mark, that's a problem.
Solution: Daniela's redesign & simplification makes this logo more easily read, more easily understood, and more flexibly displayed.

The Best Part

The best part of this rebrand however, is not the logo, but Daniela's brand guidelines. A logo is only as strong as long as it is used correctly. As it is the last deliverable in the branding processes, it is incredibly easy for designers like myself to burn out and put in a minimal effort on the design guidelines. Daniela, on the other hand, made Wheelock guide for her client that is LITERALLY 62 pages long. 

THE BRAND SYSTEM

If you want to see what attention to detail looks like, click on that link and take a gander. Thanks Daniela. Now the bar is just that much higher for the rest of us.

How do We Solve the Young Adult Problem? Give them Post Its.

A year ago, Edmund Mitchell, Anthony (my twin brother) and I started meeting up for breakfast every Monday morning. The food was eggs, the drink was coffee, and the subject matter was putting on a conference that we would actually want to go to. We believed that young adults in the Catholic world don’t need to hear another talk by the same crew of speakers we’ve been listening to since we were in highschool ourselves. We believed that what young adults really want is the opportunity to make an impact. Any event we would want to go to would be highly creative, highly interactive, and must involve a tree’s worth of post it notes. We had no idea where those conversations would lead, but decided to do a meetup in Dallas to test out our theory. When we met powerhouse designer Gaby Thompson and told her about what we were doing, we found that she had been wanting the exact same thing; our team was born. Things started moving quickly, and pretty soon we had a google doc that was 12 pages long with to do lists, talking points, and a shopping list that included Pink Flamingos and purple Christmas Lights.

No joke. This was literally the shopping list in our google doc:

To get:

• Post its

• Pink Flamingos

• Clothes hangers

• Church Bulletins

• Pope Francis cut out
  
  Why Pink Flamingos you ask?

Because nothing says Creative meetup like a lawn full of pink flamingos.

We invited young adults to come to this meetup with the goal of changing the way the Church does bulletins. Admission to the meetup was one ugly bulletin and a 6 pack of beer. The event was so much more awesome than we ever thought it could be. Turns out that as much as young adults love the chance to sit back and listen to enriching talks on the finer points of systematic theology, what they love even more is someone giving them a chance to make an impact.

So many in the Church are seeing the statistics and wondering what can be done. Millennials are all fleeing the Church in droves! We used to be able to at least count on them coming back to mass once their kids need to get into first communion, BUT THIS GENERATION ISN’T GETTING MARRIED! Whatever shall we do, Church?!

What those statistics don’t tell you is that for every 100 millennials jumping ship, one young man or woman is making the choice to leave everything behind to follow Christ. They are joining NET, FOCUS, going to Franciscan, joining the seminary, discerning religious life, and they are coming out of these communities better formed, better educated, and far more committed to their faith than many of their parents were. They’ve come out of these organizations full of passion and starry eyed at the possibilities of changing the world for Jesus. I know this because I was one of these statistical anomalies. Chances are, if you’re reading this blog, you might be one of them too. We’ve all been there. I know I left my alma mater ready to cover some teens in the precious blood of Jesus...

And that’s when were dropped off the cliff into parish life.
Yes. That heavenly place full of felt banners, cheesy jesus pictures, and yes, God incarnate.
I can’t speak for everyone here, but I’ve had so many conversations with creative types about how out of place we feel in the Church. It makes sense, though, right? It’s bad enough when the choir lady with the piercing voice belts out Gather Us In. When you are a son or daughter of the media generation and you’ve spent a few years in the schola or getting your praise on on a daily basis on your NET Team, everything in you is screaming “PLEASE, JUST LET ME DO IT!” The same goes for the hardly designed bulletins and poorly run capital campaigns. Sadly, the opportunities for creative skills in a Church that still uses Papyrus on all of their printed materials has not yet caught up.

But we do have these. Everyone loves these…. right?

It is this generation of on fire young adults that can actually solve the millennial problem. The passion and "lemme at em" mentality is there in buckets. Passion, however, as many of us have already learned, is not enough. We need professional skills that measure up to the standards of the secular world. We need wisdom in navigating the political hierarchy and the frustrations that come with Catholic organizations. Most of all, we need advocates in the broader Catholic community to advocate for better media. This community of Catholic Creatives is meant to serve in all three regards. In sharing and charitably critiquing each other's work, we hope to set the standard for Catholic media high. In putting younger creatives in touch with those who are more experienced in navigating the politics, we hope that the usual landmines can be avoided. Finally, by giving Catholic creatives a neutral, unified voice, we can create a platform from which we can influence the Church on a large scale.

Make no mistake, impact is what this generation wants more than anything else. If I hadn’t seen that at our December meetup, I would know from the hundreds of conversations I’ve had with like minded young men and women. We are, as our facebook bio says: “makers, thinkers, and do-ers. Those who want to use their gifts for a higher purpose, bring beauty back to the Church.” This generation, though sometimes over confident, though sometimes, perhaps, unaware of the complexities of the Church’s inner workings, by the grace of God can reverse the hemorrhage and make the gospel message resound across our nation.

I’ll close with this: I don’t know what Catholic Creatives is going to be. None of us do. It will be shaped by the ideas, conversations, and efforts of those of us who need what this community is and could become. We really want to get to know you and your needs, your wants, and your ideas.

Sign up for our email newsletter, get involved in the facebook group, or better yet, email us and let us know how you think you can help shape our online community, our meetups, and eventually our conference. We can’t do this without your needs and ideas. 

---

Marcellino D'Ambrosio started designing fliers for his band in High School. He is an expert water balloon filler, a veteran dodgeball player, and a slightly above average joke teller. He helps run The Crossroads Pursuit, and is a founder at D'Ambrosio Creative.

The Bulletin Problem: An In Depth Analysis

In December, 2015, Catholic creatives from all across the United States, each from different industries, gathered together to solve the bulletin problem. Here are the insights and conclusions that they gathered. To find out more about the meet up and the brainstorming processes that they took to generate these insights, click >here<.

I. Ask “Why?”

A bulletin is a part of a communications strategy, but before you can even talk about whether or not that communications strategy is effective, you need to ask why your parish is communicating in the first place. Why does your parish exist?

If you answered “to bring people to Jesus,” again, ask “why.” When you’ve answered that, ask why again. Don’t stop asking “why” until you’ve been able to gather around a vulnerable cause that moves you.

Learn more about why asking why is important: Start With Why Ted Talk

II. Ask “Why the bulletin?”

Once you know what your message is, ask “why a bulletin,” why does the bulletin exist? Most bulletins suffer from a severe split personality disorder.

• Often times the bulletin includes every detail of parish life, from Tuesday’s prayer shawl knitting group to the pancake breakfast next month.

• Tucked between these calendar updates, however, is Father Don’s short meditation on the gospel.

• Before the ads, there’s a half page story of how the youth group went on a mission trip and built a house for a family in need.

These are three separate purposes.

• Is the bulletin an event calendar meant to inform parishioners of the parish’s activities?

• Is it meant to be a method by which parishioners are fed spiritually?

• Is it meant to be a way for visitors and parishioners to connect with the rest of the parish by seeing faces and reading stories?

Ultimately, through discussion, the Creatives at the meetup decided that the bulletin should be focused on the latter.

The Bulletin Should Be Outreach, Not Updates

We decided this because it is far easier and more effective to keep parishioners updated about parish events via other communication methods such as an email newsletter, social media, a parish app, and the parish website. Furthermore, there are already plenty of resources for spiritual growth that parishioners can be turned on to. For example, Word on Fire, Crossroads Initiative, or Dynamic Catholic are great. Finally, the only audience in your parishes that you cannot send these resources to through other outlets is the group of people who are not already involved in your church.

What we concluded, then, was that the most efficient use and purpose of the bulletin is to connect new people-- specifically, visitors or those who are on the fringes-- into the life of the parish.

III. The Three Principles for Effective Bulletin Outreach

 Here are the standards to which a bulletin should be designed in order to most effectively connect new and fringe parishioners into the life of the parish:  

1. Local

In order to connect people into the life of the church, the church must have a life of its own, and it must be willing to feature that life in a personal way. This means it must feature pictures and stories of its people living and acting Christian community. If you don’t get any of the rest of these right, you can still have a very effective product if you get this first principle down.

To be connective tissue between the parish life and visitors, the bulletin has to be absolutely local to the parish community. This does NOT mean that it should be filled with pictures of the church building. We want people connected to the life of the parish, not its bricks or its crucifix or its statue of Mary in the courtyard outside. To be local, it needs to tell the stories of members.

For instance, think of the kind old usher who is there at the 9:30 am mass every week-- that greeted the visitors when they came in-- has a story. The bulletin should contain the stories of parishioners who are living out the faith. It should personalize the pastor, and contain the pictures and names of parishioners. One Catholic Creative at the meetup kept repeating the mantra: “Names, names names.”

WHERE WE WENT WRONG

Most of our bulletins, however, are the furthest thing from local. Most of them look indistinguishable from one parish in Pensacola to another in Columbus Ohio. This is because most parishes are using a bulletin printing company to get their bulletins printed for free in exchange for the adds in the back. If you are currently using one of these companies, our meetup suggested rethinking that business relationship, or at least taking control of all design in house. These companies' value offer is free printing, but they are not experts on design or on contemporary communications. Some members of the meetup questioned if the exchange is really worth the money saved, saying that it would be better to not have the bulletin then to give visitors something ugly and impersonal.
 

2. Beautiful
 

Beautiful design is far more about structuring information than picking the right fonts or getting the right margin. Good design is more a function of cutting away unnecessary information and clutter than anything else. Only the information that is absolutely necessary for executing the purpose stated above should be included. Everything else should be communicated with other mediums (email newsletter, social media...etc), or simplified and relegated to a place of lesser prominence.

Once that has been done, here are some guiding principles for good design:

• Speaking of clutter, don’t be afraid of white space. Let whitespace happen. Embrace it.

• Pick two fonts. One sans Serif, and one Serif. If you don’t know what Serif or Sans serif means, then pick ONE font. To give the text visual hierarchy vary the size and utilize the bold, all caps, and italics that font has available in its “family.”

• Let visuals and pictures tell the story. Pictures are worth much more than your text. Put the detailed text on the website or in the email.

3. Meaningful

The dates of your events, the times of your sacraments, and even the stories of of your parishioners will not be read and retained if the reader doesn’t know why they are important. Again, you need to know your “Why,” your mission; and that mission needs to be specific to your parish. If this is done well, then every piece of information that you place on your bulletin must be chosen in order to draw people into your parishes “why.”  With that in mind:

• Meaningful communication is linear.
  It starts with an introduction, develops into a body, and then closes with some sort of call to action. Each section of the bulletin should move the reader deeper into your why and lead them towards some action step.The sections, then, should make sense, not just on their own but in relation to each other.  

IV. OBSTACLES TO GOOD BULLETINS

This conclusion list would not be complete if we did not acknowledge the challenges that any parish faces in making changes to their communications strategy. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but we believe these are the two greatest challenges to a local, beautiful, and meaningful designed bulletin.

1) Many churches do not have anyone in charge of any of communications or anyone with the technological training to understand them.

If someone is in charge of designing the bulletin or updating the website, the odds are that they are also in charge of booking rooms, answering phone calls, and managing Fr’s calendar. They are most likely not trained in digital communications; wordpress and flocknote are most likely uncomfortable to them, and they are mostly designing on microsoft publisher. Facebook is probably the last thing that they want to think about. In order to really change the bulletin, these other mediums of communication need to be given time and consistent effort. Most parish offices need to be reorganized such that the job descriptions and titles make more sense. The administrative assistant should not be in charge of designing bulletins, and the communications director should not be in charge of taking care of all of the parish’s IT- i.e. if the server goes down, call some one who fixes those professionally. The right people need to be hired and given the resources and support they need to make the changes that they need to make in order for truly effective communication to take root.

2) Many parishes are incapable of managing complaints

Selecting an audience and a purpose for the bulletin means simplifying, reordering, and hewing off information that is not relevant to the audience which you have selected. In short, it means excluding some information that some people want to be included. In parish life, complaints tend to grind any change to an immediate halt. When you stop using the bulletin as an event calendar, there will certainly be parishioners who will not be happy with the change.

In order for any significant progress to be made with the parish bulletin part of the strategy for its implementation must include a plan to communicate the reasons behind the changes to the parish. Perhaps a strategic move to stave off favoritism complaints would be to totally do away with the bulletin all together and then to re-institute the new communications tool later. However, whatever happens, the decision makers & staff have to be prepared to hold their ground when parishioners complain.

In conclusion, the most important issue with bulletin design is not the clipart or bad font selections, but it is the lack of intentional purpose behind church communications. This is a systemic problem that needs to be fixed in the staff of a parish before the bad bulletin problem can be clearly addressed. However, for parishes who are ready to use the bulletin effectively, we hope that the principles outlined above -namely, local, beautiful, and meaningful, can act as a helpful guide for a new compelling approach to bulletins.