During the week before Christmas vacation, I found my to-do list included two new sermon posters, a Disciple Now look and a couple of worship center banners. That is a lot of designing for a normal week and too much for a week that you are preparing to be out of the office for next 10 days. Anyway I pulled it off though I missed out on some sleep during the weekend.

You can see the Disciple Now look in a different post. Today’s design is the pastor’s new AM sermon series “Dress for Success.” Putting on our spiritual armor, Ephesians 6, is the idea behind series.

I thought it would be cool to create a “magazine cover” for the series art. The title “Dress for Success” became the magazine title. I wanted to model the design off the magazine “Details.” I like their design of a single cover picture and the font that they have for cover (though I was not overly impressed the actual content in the issue I read.)

Two problems quickly arose: 1) I could not find a single picture that was 24 inches wide @ 300dpi and 2) Details uses a font that was designed for them and is not for sell currently or easily found on the internet. Pictures in the design have to be extremely large to look good on the poster. To solve the picture problem, I used multiple shots. To solve the font issue, I looked until I found a font I liked that would become the “Dress for Success” font. Using the same font all over the cover help complete the look.
Once I completed the magazine cover, I put it on top of a purple and black textured background.  This allowed the magazine to maintain a magazine size while I printed it in a poster size.

The Student Ministry asked me to help out with a design for their 2007 Disciple Now Weekend. This year’s theme is “Freedom in Christ.”

The design is based off a design I saw in Print Magazine and the colors are once again from a Rodney White painting.

This is the design for Sherwood’s 2006 “Christmas look.” It is not only the Pastor’s sermon series look, but also the end of year giving campaign and the holiday events.

It is a simple design based on the Biblical story of the wise men coming to see Jesus.

The title is a play off of the popular TV show “Desperate Housewives.”

I used the following criteria: start with a “Desperate Housewives” poster; contrast a desperate family with a family reading the word (direction the pastor set) and finish with original looking artwork.

I liked the final product. It met the criteria without looking like I stole the show’s artwork. I did use fonts that were similar to the shows. The contrast between the two families was further enhanced by the background colors and multiple desperate families.

There are many days when the creativity does not come easy or quick enough. This week was no exception. So, I went looking for inspiration.

The first stop was iStockphoto. I found an OK picture of a lion (Lion of Judah) running somewhat towards the camera (the action of coming) while spending too much time looking through their pictures. I did not start off with the lion in mind; I think was searching for royality or a king. One of the pictures had a cat in it and something struck.

The next thought or idea was too search through some Ken Jenkins‘ photos stored on my computer. I save thumbnail pictures from artists that I like in an artist section. There were no pictures of lions moving towards the camera in his folder.

While in my artist section, I looked through another artist’s folder, Rodney White. He is a very cool painter. He creates new paintings that look old and tarnished. Most remind me of an old rusted tin or metal advertising sign left outside in the weather for way too long. His strength is in his use of typography and colors.

The gallery website that I found him in had closed shop a while back. I searched for him on Google and found his website. One day I would like to see his work in person.

While there, I came across this painting. I thought the colors were right for this poster – dark and a little murky. They could show the idea of judgement, the darkness of our times and the warning to be ready.

The only way I knew to re-create the tarnished or whethered look on the computer was to create each section in Photoshop Elements using the brush feature. I am brand new to using brushes. Someone had blogged about the quality of Jason Gaylord’s work and when I went to his site I knew immediately I wanted to try it. I downloaded one of his worn brush sets and begin to experment.

So, now I had my idea and direction. I grabbed the color scheme out of Rodney’s painting. Then, I began working on a section at a time with two or three colors from the 19 color scheme. The first section completed was a part of the title. It came out well. The next 3 or 4 were terrible and had to be scrapped as I learned that you do not need too many layers. Once that lesson was learned it flowed pretty well.

Melissa from 44 SUBURBIA and Jason would like to know when their brushes have been used. They have created the best brushes that I have found so far. Thanks to both of you and Rodney.