We have not wings, we cannot soar;
But we have feet to scale and climb
By slow degrees, by more and more,
The cloudy summits of our time.

The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.

I hope you’ll find them as inspiring as I have with this set of wallpapers for your desktop, iPad, and/or iPhone.

Download the wallpaper (ZIP 2.4 MB)

Matzah is the brittle, flat bread eaten during the Passover, and there are three pieces that sit prominently on the Passover table. There is debate about the meaning of the three pieces, but there is little room for debate about the meaning of the matzah itself. Consider the following:

Matzah is unleavened. Leaven represents sin, and the first task before Passover is to remove the the leaven—any cakes, breads, etc—from the house. From one Haggadah, the leader reads:

“Any leaven that may still be in the house, which I have or Have not seen, which I have or have not removed, shall be as if it does not exist, and as the dust of the earth. Jesus said of LEAVEN: “Be on your guard against the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. (Matthew 16:6)”

Matzah is striped & pierced. To any Christian this symbolism would be almost shrugged off as intentional, but this isn’t a Christian invention. The Jewish method of cooking leaves matzah striped and pierced. Jesus was whipped/striped by his accusers, and pierced as he was hung on the cross.

Lest there be any room for doubt, let me now tell you what happens to the matzah during the Seder.

As I mentioned before, there are three matzos placed prominently on the table. The middle piece is broken, with the larger piece being wrapped in a special white cloth. This piece of matzah is called the “afikoman” which means “the coming one.” After being broken and wrapped, it is hidden or buried to be found later in the ritual, and redeemed for a reward.

It’s interesting that in Luke we find Jesus saying, “With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer:” He knew the next hours and days would be a confusing blur, and wanted to share this meal that was telling them exactly what was going to happen. He holds up the striped, pierced, unleavened bread, breaks it in half, and says, “This is my body.” How much more clear could He be? They knew what happened to that piece of matzah.

At the end of the Passover Seder, the afikoman has been found, redeemed for a prize, and is then eaten as the dessert. The afikoman is divided up, according to one Haggadah “as the Passover lamb was from the time of the exodus until the destruction of the Temple.” By Jewish custom, there is no lamb eaten at the Passover Seder because the Passover lamb can no longer be sacrificed in the Temple. While they hold up all the other pieces of the Passover Seder, many Jews do not lift the lamb bone lest they be reminded of the lack of a Temple. As Christians, we understand that Jesus Christ was the ultimate and final “paschal lamb.”

“Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” John 1:29

There is no other sacrifice required. There is no more blood of bulls and goats required. As Peter said, “For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.” (1 Peter 3:18 NIV). The matzah was broken, buried, and has been found. Once, for all. Thank You, Jesus.

So is there no hope, then? Are we doomed to red type on a blue background, permanently destroying our retinas and possibly causing birth defects in the unborn? Nay. We are not without hope.

While there are tons of great tools out there to help with this, the most efficient and easy to use is a free online resource called Kuler from Adobe. Kuler is a web-hosted application for generating color themes. It allows you to quickly create color variations and, more importantly, search for color themes based on a keyword.

Getting Started

First, you’ll want to have an Adobe ID account. If you don’t have one, click here to register. It’s free, and not only will it give you access to Kuler, but you’ll also be able to download all the software trials, resources, and free beta software (if you’re into that kind of thing) that Adobe puts out.

Once you’ve registered, browse to the Kuler site: http://kuler.adobe.com. In the upper right hand corner, click “Sign In” and enter your Adobe ID username and password. (Note: You don’t have to sign in to play around with Kuler, or even to search for color themes. Signing in, however, allows you access to special features such as saving the color swatches for use in other Adobe programs like Photoshop, and Illustrator, creating themes, and bookmarking favorites.)

Learning Your Way Around

When you first sign in, you’ll see the Kuler Newest Themes screen. The color bars across the top are the five colors that are part of the newest theme at the point you logged in. Then below that, from left to right, you’ll see the search and navigation area, the themes feed (multiple themes stacked), the details of the selected theme, and a column with News & Features from Adobe.

Probably the best way to learn your way around anything is to poke around and click things and see what they do. I know that sounds like the easy way out for a tutorial (“Oh, just poke around? I couldn’t have figure THAT out on my own. Thanks, Wes.”) but with a tool like Kuler, it really is meant to be best used by exploration.

Searching for & Using Themes

The beauty of Kuler for non-designers is the ability to search for a color theme based on a keyword. As users create themes within Kuler, they’re able to apply various “tags” to describe the color palette. So if you search with the term “sunrise” you’ll get the following:

This is great because it takes the guesswork out of color selection. If you’re not really searching for a keyword, but just need to find a cool color theme, you might want to click on the “Most Popular” selection in the navigation menu. You’ll be presented with page after page of beautiful themes. All we need now is to get the colors from the Kuler website into our design.

Download the Theme .ASE File

If you are using Photoshop, the easiest way to get Kuler themes into the program is to just use the extension that shipped with Photoshop CS4 & CS5 by going to Window > Extensions > Kuler. You’ll get a nifty little app where you can browse themes, search by keyword, modify existing themes, and event create your own.

If that’s not an option for whatever reason, everything from CS2 forward supports Adobe Swatch Exchange, or ASE files. You can download the file by clicking on the download icon in the theme’s detail area.

You’ll be prompted to save the file to your computer. For the sake of this tutorial, I’ll assume you’re using Photoshop, although the process is very similar across all Adobe software.

Open the swatches palette in Photoshop and in the upper right hand corner you’ll see a little arrow with lines beside it. Click that button, and you’ll be presented with a ton of options for your color swatches. Choose “Load Swatches…” and then browse to the location where you’ve saved your .ASE file. Your theme will be added as individual swatches in your color palette.

For the record, you can load ASE files in other graphics software, such as Gimp, but it may require a plugin or a little noodling. By the way — if your church isn’t able to purchase Photoshop, you should really give Photoshop Elements 9 a look. It’s $80, max, online and cheap enough that you should be able to purchase it and donate it to your church if they really don’t have the dough.

The Hard(er) Way — Color Values

If your program doesn’t accept .ASE files, or you just don’t want to mess with them you can always use the RGB (or CMYK, or HEX) values provided from Kuler. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, that’s okay. RGB is an acronym for Red, Green, and Blue. So the RGB numbers represent the amount of each of those primary colors that it takes to make the exact color you’re looking at. You know what? It’s all a bit more complicated than I can really explain here. How’s about you check out this Wiki entry if you really care.

In order to use this, you’ll click on the slider icon in the detail view of the color, where you’ll be taken to a screen that will provide you with the numeric color values for each color in your theme. You can copy and paste them into the color picker for whatever graphics program you’re using. Even MS Paint allows you to create color this way (please don’t use MS Paint).

Now What?

Now that you’ve got the colors from Kuler into your program, your options are now kind of limitless. If you’re using a photo for your background, you can use Kuler to find a complimentary, high contrast color (other than white or black) to help complete the design. Or maybe you’re not using a photo and need some ideas for the background & text colors. Maybe you’re trying to figure out what to do with some basic graphic elements. Explore and experiment. There’s no quick path to good design.

Wrapping Up

This was either very helpful, or you’re under your desk crying, “I thought you were going to help. Make it stop.” Color issues can be intimidating, but once you get the hang of this very easy tool, you’ll have no problem hanging with the big boys and you’ll be creating color coordinating designs that could hang in the Smithsonian in no time. And who knows? Maybe you’ll find it easier to dress yourself when it’s all said and done.

What’s the most intimidating part of church media design to you? Let me know in the comments and I’ll do my best to help you out.

This free, original motion background loop is free to use, but please do not redistribute. To download the files (720p & 480p files in mp4 format) just use the button below to add it to your cart (no worries—it’s free) and “check out” (again…seriously, it’s free). Enjoy!

Desktop Wallpapers:

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iPhone: wallpaper

iPad: wallpaper

So needless to say (and yet here I am saying it) I’m always looking for ways to improve on my presentations and make them more interesting and, frankly, bearable to my audience.

Enter Nancy Duarte, author of Slide:ology and a PowerPoint/Presentation Guru supreme. Nancy was the mastermind behind Al Gore’s now world famous (or infamous depending on your views) “An Inconvenient Truth” presentation. So she obviously knows how to make even the most boring person and topics in the world (ahem) seem interesting, and now in the below video, shares that knowledge with us. Enjoy:

One of my favorite moments of the film is when Remy takes a bite of a strawberry. The background scenery fades to black, and a little swirl dances onto the screen to represent how the fruit tastes to him. After that, Remy takes a bite of cheese and another swirl rolls beside his head. But then, Remy takes a bite of each at the same time and the swirls of color explode and twist together on the screen to communicate the power of this new, exciting taste combination that he’s never experienced. From that point forward, Remy is constantly pushing and trying to do and experience new things that will influence his cooking and his life.

I’m thinking of this because I’m bored. I’m in a situation for the next few hours that has me pinned to one spot with nothing but my phone and a spotty (but at least it’s slow) 3G connection.

My first thought was, “This going to be a loooooong, boring day.” But the creative in me smacked the pessimist in me and said, “Then look for ways to make this creative, and fun, and try to stretch yourself a little!”

An impossible task it seemed, until I started taking a closer look around me. I’m in one of the least creative places in the world – a production plant. But as I started looking around I noticed that I’m surrounded not just by cold concrete and unassembled product, but also by tons of unique and interesting textures.

I snapped a few photos that are included here. I just wanted to post to remind you of the fact that there is inspiration all around you, no matter where you are. And if there’s inspiration and texture all around, then you can design. And THAT, my friends, means anyone can cook.

God without parts. The general idea of divine simplicity can be stated in this way: the being of God is identical to the “attributes” of God. In other words, such characteristics as omnipresence, goodness, truth, eternity, etc. are identical to his being, not qualities that make up his being, nor abstract entities inhering in him as in a substance.

I believe this, as do many Jewish, Christian, and even Muslim philosophical theologians (not to say we all believe the same things by any stretch).

Not to be too mystic or philosophical about the design world, but I think this same idea can apply. On the most basic level, designers should learn to keep it simple. Not to get drawn into the trap of adding just “one more thing” or another effect, or another overlay…just letting simple words or text settle on a simple background.

On a deeper level, the idea of divine simplicity says that you can’t separate God’s attributes from His being. This is a profound beauty when you think about the fact that you can’t separate the wrath of God from the love of God. You can’t separate the judgement of God from the mercy or grace of God. In design terms, you can’t separate your elements (text, background, subtitles, etc) from one another as though they’re meant to operate as independent entities. They’re not.

The next time you’re not sure what to add, maybe you should ask, “what can I take away?” Ask, “how can I simply this while still retaining the emotion and message I’m trying to convey?” The more you do, the more you may just realize that simplicity really is divine.

So all that said — let’s get to it! The last on our list of ways to improve your church media right now is:

Pay attention to the balance and emphasis of your design.

Now that’s a broad statement, and composition is too big an idea to be fully explored in one blog post. For the purpose of this series, I’m going to speak to volunteers who probably aren’t full-time, and aren’t professional designers. So this is a very basic, cursory approach to composition and, more specifically, composition for church media.

First, let’s talk about balance. Some might refer to this as gravity or opposition. It’s the idea of how the pieces of your composition play against or with each other, and it’s a big idea to wrap your brain around. In it’s most simplistic form, think of your design in terms of black and white or shades of gray. Contrast. Can you read the text from a distance? Are you leaving enough room for the lettering or artwork to breath?

The other part of balance comes from what I’ll call gravity. Does your design have a distinct gravity? If the letters each represented, say, solid wood blocks would they be positioned in such a way that feels natural? This doesn’t necessarily mean everything is lying at the bottom of your composition — maybe the point of gravity is in the center of your design. Wherever it is, the objects in your composition should feel naturally placed and spaced.

To make this even more simple, and if you have no idea what I’m talking about but want to improve I’ll give you this tip: work from the center out. I don’t mean centering your text, necessarily. In fact, depending on your title or the emphasis of your graphic, centering your text may be a terrible decision. Rather, I mean that the elements of your design, especially text, should live within the center area of your design.

For the sake of your composition you have to pay attention to how the title or text, as a whole, plays with or against the background or secondary elements. This is not a hard & fast rule, and isn’t the best solution for every situation. What I’m saying is that if you don’t know where to start, try working the center and then start experimenting from there.

Also, while we’re using the gravity analogy, not only should the overall design have a gravity and balance, but the individual elements should have a certain gravity. In my post on text, I mentioned that bringing the letters closer together makes them appear more natural and esthetically pleasing. The same is true with words and blocks of text. Don’t go overboard and squish everything together, but in a 1024×768 space, you do need to be space conscious. More often than not, it will be to your advantage to play what I like to call “Word Tetris.” If you look at the design and you see gaps or holes that would make you say “D’OH!” in Tetris, move them around until the pieces fit together and are balanced.

Finally, when I talk about emphasis, I mean just that – what is the message of this graphic? If your audience can only take one word, one impression away from your graphic, what will it be?

Many times, you’ll accomplish this by making sure that the emphasis is correctly reflected in the proportions of your text. Other times, you’ll make that impression through a graphic with understated or simple text. However you accomplish it, you need to be able to step away from your graphic and say, “This communicates my message.”

It’s ultimately not important that your graphic is cool or trendy. If it doesn’t communicate the message and enhance worship or the presentation of the gospel, you’ve failed.

There’s a lot more to be said on the subject of composition that we’ll have to address another day. That said, if you’ll follow these tips to improve the balance and emphasis you’ll see an immediate payoff in the quality and reception of your church media.

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