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posted by James on 02/4/09

One of my last projects for 2008 was to design a 2009 calendar with images I’d captured of God’s awesome creation over the entire year. It amazed me how much time it took to assemble, design, proofread, and print as simple a project as a calendar!

Though quality is proportionally dependent on the amount of time you put into it, creating a personalized calendar is actually something most anyone can do!

As mentioned above, creating your own unique calendar can be summarized into four distinct steps: assemblage, design, layout, and print. Assemblage must begin now! Seasons change, snow melts, flowers fade, leaves fall, and days shorten. The key to a beautiful calendar is beautiful pictures, and beautiful pictures are captured, intentionally or not, only when your at the right place at the right time (with your camera). You have to take advantage of every opportunity: you never know which photo-shoot will produce the picture that actually goes into the final project.

When the year starts drawing to a close, it is time to sit down and do some designing! Go through all your pictures from the year, choosing only the biggest and most stunning images have. Often, the design will revolve around the pictures you choose. For the rest of the calendar, let your creative juices flow; it’s amazing how many different ways there are to arrange those familiar objects on a page! You can always add Scripture verses, famous quotes, fancy borders, wild colors, creative captions and background pictures. I did my designing in InDesign, working off a template of another calendar I liked.

So once your calendar all laid out, it is time to go in and proofread. Did I spell everything right? Is the 4th of July really on the 4th of July? Are references correct? Is text all sized up right? Will anything get chopped off on the final product? Are images in CMYK and not RGB? This step also requires you to layout the calendar in a separate document that accurately accounts for page placement: a calendar with an 8.5×11 size cover must be printed on a 17×11 sheet of paper with the front and back covers placed on one side and the inside covers on the other. It is really quite complex, but with a bit of thought (and reference to other calendars), you can calculate where each month and it’s complementary picture should be placed.

Finally, after a full year of shooting and many long hours at the computer, your calendar is ready to print! I am very fortunate to be working at a publishing house, so this step turned out be be quite relaxing. Once the 9 pages were printed, they were put through a folding machine, collated by hand, stapled together with a special staple gun, cut to size, and to top it all off, had a hole drilled through the top for easy hanging.

Yes, it takes an awfully long time to assemble, design, proofread, and print a little calendar. But now that I’ve given several away and sold many more, I can honestly say it was worth it! I’m just glad I only have to make them once a year.

7 Comments » | posted in Art Work

posted by James on 03/12/08

For the past few weeks, quite a bit of my time here at the Headquarters Graphic Art’s Department has been spent on designing all sorts of publications. Following are some simple steps on how to take a design project from start to finish.

1. Determine the theme, mood and/or purpose. A birthday card design will usually look a whole lot different than something like the book cover we were designing last week, “Resolving Seven Deadly Stresses.”

2. Draw thumbnails. This is the most creative part! On a piece of paper, just scratch out ideas for where text and pictures should be and how they fit together. It usually takes me at least a dozen thumbnails to get something that looks good enough to go forward with.

3. Think of applicable pictures and decide on a color scheme. Things will naturally come to mind as you think about your theme. For a booklet titled “Anointed for Greater Works”, I began working with more olive green colors and bright or “skyish” pictures.

4. Open up Photoshop and combine your thoughts and thumbnails. For me, this is the most enjoyable step. For the “Equipping Dads Seminar” brochure, I playing around a long time with the title before I got something I really liked. With color and effects, your thumbnails can change quite a bit.

5. Check to make sure you are applying the basic rules of design. As I was struggling to get one project to look right, someone walked in and suggested I use heavier alignment. Minutes afterward, I had a surprisingly transformed design ready to go.

6. Add special effects. Once you have a layout you like, it’s important to spiffy up the text, add borders, color correct pictures and take care of all the details to make your layout a finished project.

7. Have others critique your work. This can happen at any point in the designing process, but it’s amazing how someone else can point out things that you would never have thought of. One night, our department worked together till past 12:00 designing, critiquing, and redesigning comps for an important, time-sensitive publication. It was actually pretty fun!

So, next time you cringe at the thought of needing to design something, remember that it becomes much simpler, as well as more enjoyable, when you break it down into seven simple, achievable steps. “For God is not the author of confusion…” (I Corinthians 14:40)

6 Comments » | posted in Art Work

posted by James on 01/29/08

Recently, I was going over some pictures I took from around Christmas-time and really liked the ones of this incredibly colorful and creative ginger- bread house Daniel, Jonathan, and David made. I wasn’t there when you guys made it but I’m sure you had tons of fun building and decorating it! Here in Chicago temperatures have hovered around 0 for awhile so I deemed posting these cozy pictures very appropriate.

7 Comments » | posted in Art Work, Photography

posted by Donald on 05/31/07

Art is a universal language. What an experience it is to learn to capture an object or event on paper in your own way. But what is better than being an artist? Teaching other artists! I remember that a reporter once wanted to run an article on my work—but now I have the opportunity to be the reporter and I have a lot to report about Jonathan and David!

Jonathan has the valuable character quality of diligence.

Every other Tuesday, we try delving a little deeper into the different techniques of chalk art. We watched Ding Teuling’s videos and started practicing on the easel that Grandpa made for us to use years ago when we came from Manassas to do chalk talks in Salem. As Jonathan and I work together, it grants a particular fulfilment to pass on what I’ve learned from Matthew Bowman and so many others.

David often encourages me with his enthusiastic spirit.

For James’ birthday, David and I looked off of a stamp to draw a strikingly-colored bufflehead on a new placemat. You should have seen James when he pulled it from the gift bag and saw it for the first time!

One of the tricks of the trade that David used was drawing a grid that helped him enlarge the tiny picture on the stamp. He agrees too that actually turning a picture upside down and copying it that way is a very useful tactic. It helps you draw exactly what you see and not what you think you see.

God bless you also with diligence and perception. Maybe you will have the chance to try some of these rewarding techniques. Most of all, may all our work glorify Him as we remember to do it “wholeheartedly, as unto the Lord”.

DILIGENCE

      Visualizing each task as a special assignment from the Lord
                 and using all my energy to accomplish it 

3 Comments » | posted in Art Work

posted by Daniel on 04/11/07

Since our family was planning to take a vacation to Virginia the weekend of Donald’s and my birthdays, we decided to celebrate them a week early. Throughout the day that we celebrated my birthday, a late and heavy snow drifted down outside, which added to the cozy atmosphere inside. Every one took time out of their normal routine to make the evening a special one – especially Donald, who put his art skills to work and produced a beautiful icing picture of a coyote.

Relatives and family were very generous, and I received several gifts. David and Donald had worked together making a homemade placemat with original art work on it, and an uncle sent an elaborate marble chess set. I was given a chess timer to go along with it, and we’re all looking to hours of strategy and excitement playing together. One of the funnest gifts was juggling clubs! I’ve got a little practice so far, but still have a long way to go. Jonathan and David are also catching on, and we can’t wait to work on a few tricks together.

Saturday night we all looked at albums after Donald’s party, and it was an excellent time to reminesce of past events and times together as a family. We all rejoiced at how God has continued to deepen our valuable relationships with him and each other over the years, and anticipate what he will accomplish through us in the upcoming year!

2 Comments » | posted in Art Work, Family News