My wife loves to bake. Did I say she LOVES to bake? For a true baker, using box cake mix is akin to a custom furniture designer buying a table from Ikea. However, sometimes time and effort vs. reward warrants using pieces that are already done and figured out – like a box mix in baking.
The same can be true with design.
Now I know the true design purists and artists are already lining up right behind the bakers to flog me for such claims. But that’s ok. The truth is, I enjoy and regularly create from scratch even the most minute details in my designs, the same goes for my wife with baking. And you can “taste” the difference when each detail has been created and crafted for that specific purpose and application. That is good design.
So why cheat and use the “box mix” in your church media and design? Shouldn’t we always give our very best? Avoid using work done for someone else’s audience and not our own? What situations would it be appropriate to even employ such vile tactics?
Here are a few situations in which I think you should pull out the betty crocker in your design process:
Time
In a perfect world, we would have the message or series title for Sunday morning, 4 weeks in advance with a detailed design brief and description. Reality though? (or at least in my experiences) You get the final title Saturday night around 11:30pm with content changes coming the next morning before services start.
When your back is against the wall, it helps to have some resources to pull from that will allow you to quickly assemble a quality piece that may not be 100% original with you – but is still done well and on time.
Talent
I understand that not every volunteer or everyone reading this has a strong handle on photoshop and graphic design. For that matter, many of you tasked with creating the graphics for your church may have no experience or formal background whatsoever.
When your personal skill sets fall short, your end product does not have to. Know where your weaknesses are and have ready made solutions to help fill in the gaps. Envato runs a collection of sites that have native project files for just about anything you can think of. It’s not free, but has saved me hundreds of hours trying to figure something out on my own that someone else already did.
Reinventing the wheel is stupid
Creating a custom graphic that is easily accessible (and often free) just to have created it from scratch is a waste of time.
For example, the other week I needed to quickly create a slide with a time countdown graphic. I envisioned one of those old school flip clocks that became popular when skeuomorphism design was all the rage. Instead of setting out in photoshop to create the effect, which I could do, I took to Google in search of a free PSD download.
Immediately I had a dozen options to choose from. After weeding out the spyware sites and any designs that didn’t fit my vision, I still had a handful of perfectly good open and free options. I just dropped the well organized layers into the rest of my design and updated the numbers to read what I needed. Done. Could I have done it myself? Sure. Just as good? Of course. Would anyone have known? NOPE!
Disclaimer: I am not suggesting that you take someone elses design and use it as your own. Or that you bypass creativity. As in my example, the clock served as an element in my final design – not the entire design and concept.
“Box Mix Design” should not always be used, but when one of these three circumstances is present, it becomes a time saving option.
What about you? What methods have you found to expedite the creation process when the pressure is on? What might you add to the list of box mixes?
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