Starting Something New

 

Welcome banner I designed for the Greenhouse entrance at Ambition 15

In January, over 700 students and staff gathered in Tampa, Florida for Ambition 15, a conference geared towards equipping students to start new ministries, either on their own campus or on a new campus where there is no current InterVarsity work.

Signs I designed to help direct students in the Greenhouse

I worked with the conference planners to help create a space at the conference called Greenhouse. It was an interactive, hands-on space designed to help students take their God-given vision for a new ministry and give it 'legs'. Coaches and training tools were available for them to start planning out how to get the word out, how to gather partners, how to lead, etc.

Designs of stickers and a tshirt that InterVarsity staff wore around Greenhouse to identify themselves

 

One of three double-sided "canvases" (worksheets) used to lead students through the process of developing a vision, finding partners and making concrete plans for the new ministry they want to start.

The conference awarded 8 students with a planting grant, $1000 and a coach for 6 months to get them started. These students included a young woman named Kat, who, as a student with disabilities, never truly felt accepted at her school until she encountered the InterVarsity chapter. Now she has a vision to begin a small group for other students with disabilities so they can also find the same love and acceptance of Jesus.

Pray that God would take these seeds planted at Ambition and grow them into flourishing new ministries so that more unreached places on campus would be impacted by the Gospel.

What happened at Price of Life?

Wondering what happened at Price of Life in October? Here's a brief snapshot. Thank you for your prayers and support in this life-changing event.

click to view larger

 

Price of Life - it's coming up soon!

The Price of Life campaign is happening next week! After months of working on this, I am excited to see things coming together. If only I could be there in Michigan to be a part of it in person! Here is some of the work I've done for the campaign.

Please pray for God to be at work this next week. I am hopeful and excited to see him change lives and change culture. I'm grateful for the opportunity to contribute to helping fight human trafficking and sharing the hope of Jesus.

a collection of some of the print pieces I've designed for Price of Life

This is the first time I've had design work featured on a bus! Exciting.

My Michigan colleagues sent me this picture of one of the banners I designed.

It is surreal to see my work on my alma mater's campus! Wish I could see it in person.

I printed a couple of banners for the kick-off event's photo booth where students will take pictures of themselves to post on Facebook to promote Price of Life. I thought I'd get a selfie before mailing it off.

Upcoming Notecards

One of the smaller and sometimes more fun things we get to do is design new InterVarsity-branded notecards that our staff can use. Most of the time these are Thank You cards used to send to ministry partners. But we also produce Christmas cards and Invitation cards. Here are a couple I've designed recently that will be printed soon!

Creating a Campaign

For the past several months I've been working on a number of pieces related to an upcoming event happening at my own alma mater, The Price of Life campaign.

In October, InterVarsity chapters at the University of Michigan will be partnering with many local and state-wide organizations to raise awareness and fight against human trafficking (modern day slavery).

fact sheet explaining more about human trafficking including statistics

Human trafficking is a global issue affecting millions of people. But it also hits close to home. There are said to be up to 300,000 children or more currently enslaved in the United States.

postcard sent to all residents of a UofM dorm inviting them
to a kit build (to assist those most vulnerable to trafficking)

As believers in a God who created all humans to bear his image, human slavery is unquestionably the worst offense to what we hold sacred.

front page of the Price of Life website

I'm excited to lend my design skills to contribute to this important effort. I wanted to show you some of my work as well as ask for your prayers as the students and staff at UofM enter into this campaign.

prayer card for InterVarsity students to encourage them to be praying over the summer

The aim is to raise awareness to 30,000 people in the state of Michigan and engage 5,000 people in Ann Arbor in significant conversations about human trafficking and how the Gospel relates to this issue. 

PowerPoint background for when InterVarsity staff make presentations
to other organizations inviting them to partner in the campaign

Please pray that God would go before us in giving us success to fight against this evil. And pray that many people would clearly hear the Gospel at these events, coming to understand Jesus as the only true solution to human trafficking.

poster to be used around campus in the weeks leading up to the campaign

And pray for me as I provide visual resources for this campaign, that my work would effectively communicate and promote the event.

Stay tuned for more!

The Young People Get It!

Photo Credit: Melissa Montecuollo

As I have done for the past few years, I presented at our annual Orientation for New Staff conference (ONS) to talk about branding and design. This year, however, we introduced a new interactive component to the talk, giving new staff some time to create their own fake prayer letter using a variety of options (photos, captions, headlines, etc.).

Staff were given 3-4 options for each of these elements of a prayer letter,
then asked to choose 7-10 pieces and create their own pretend letter.

Photo Credit: Anna Maffety

After giving them a few minutes to work in groups, I led a time of debrief, giving an overview of some main principles of design and communication.

These were the four options for the header. Which one do you think works best?

What I learned from leading this new activity is that these young staff get it! As I debriefed with them, I found them to be very astute and intuitive about design, catching on to ideas of scan message, using the right colors and fonts, communicating visually through images and layout, and other important principles.

This is the moment in my presentation where I tell staff to have someone
take a picture of them while they're speaking. It always gets a good laugh.
Photo Credit: Anna Maffety

Each year as I teach this component at ONS, I'm finding that the new staff get it so much more quickly than a lot of older staff I work with. It makes sense, as these new staff are much more familiar with current culture trends like the use of visuals, social media, and shorter bits of communication rather than longer ones. It doesn't take much for me to sell "branding" to them because they totally get the value of good branding. It's encouraging to see things move this way, and I'm hopeful that this means my quest to brand InterVarsity well is in good hands with these "young'uns"!

Note: If you are interested in using this training tool with your staff, area, region, or students, please contact me!

Making a Case

As I showed you last month, a recent project I worked on was a new brochure that helps new staff present a case for InterVarsity's ministry on campus to new/potential donors. I showed you my first pencil sketch draft last month, and here's the final product!

The challenge in a brochure is that many people merely skim it rather than read all of the content. My job as a designer is to design it so that people can skim and get all the critical information, but also feel invited into reading more. I did this by using plenty of pictures, breaking text up into small paragraphs that begin with bolder, bigger fonts, creating variety of layouts to keep people interested, and visualizing some of the content using graphic elements.