Remember the color wheel from elementary school art class? There’s actually a use for it. Color theory creates a structure for color; it provides a guide for color combinations. A good way to visualize color theory is by using the color wheel.
We have primary colors (red, blue, yellow), then secondary colors (green, orange, purple), and tertiary colors (yellow-orange, red-orange, red-purple, blue-purple, blue-green, and yellow-green). As you see how colors relate to each other, let’s look at some ways they can be used.
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Now that you have a method of selecting colors, it’s a completely different beast to use those colors. Here are a few suggestions about using color on your site:
Idea Generating Practices For Logo Design
Once you’re done creating sketches, turn them into fully realized logos!
At the end of the project, take time to celebrate! All of the hard work is over! Don’t forget to take some time to mourn pieces of the logo you may have lost along the way, it’s completely normal to feel that way after working so hard.
Icons are not just a graphic way to make your site more interesting, they serve a real purpose. When icons are used to supplement text, they actually help site visitors comprehend content faster. Visual cues (used well) create a quick overview of content and make content easier to scan.
We believe that there is no detail worth ignoring in good design, so why settle for icons that “kinda work” for ministry specific content?
We’ll start with the easiest fix of all—adding a link! We see this simple mistake all-too often, and it’s one that might cost you. Each slide should link to a page with more details on the event or series. Even if it’s a simple message (like, “Happy Easter from your church family” with your Easter service times), the slide should link to a relevant page. Every time someone is interested enough in the content to click on the slide but it goes nowhere, you’re much closer to losing that person as an attendee. That’s a bummer you can easily avoid!
Finding a great rotator image can be a tricky thing. You need to strike a balance between getting a clear image with finding one that actually represents what you’re trying to communicate. We see a lot of images that are simply not large enough (in pixel size) for the size of the rotator.
Speaking of images, we found a few rotators that gave the photos or words in them odd cropping. This means you can’t quite read the full sentences or see the faces of the people on the edge of the photos—which is a very common formatting problem many of us have in website design.
At the time we’re assembling this Design Kit, we’re seeing a lot of Christmas red and green around the web. And while it is tempting to channel those seasonal colors into all of your homepage rotators, that might not be the best match with the rest of your church website’s design, branding, or colors. This holiday color lesson applies year-round. It’s easier than you might think to have a clashing homepage with a rainbow full of colorful rotator images.
This usually happens accidentally as a result of formatting. Or maybe, you know that it’s happening, but just don’t know how to change it. The image you uploaded into the rotator already had text on it, like a date or a time for an event––but the rotator is also pulling in the slide description as well. This results in double text that overlaps and confuses visitors.
You work in church communications, so you know the information on the homepage rotators like the back of your hand. But for new visitors and members who only come to the site once or twice a month, they’re seeing everything for the first time. This means that when you have more than a handful of slides (or when those slides move too quickly), your information is not being seen.
Imagine if movie theaters didn’t update the show times every day. That’s just madness! While your church might not have as many daily events as the local cineplex, your rotators should talk about the things going on in your church this week and this month to be timely and relevant. We see too many churches with outdated information for events that had happened days or even weeks earlier.
Think about how many pairs of eyes are on your church website every day. Say you have 100 daily visitors, each one of them seeing that beautiful rotator promoting a candlelight service that happened 4 days ago. Those short days may pass quickly for you as you’re busy in the operations and communications of your church, but that’s 400 people you’re “inviting” to an event that’s in the past! That’s 400 times you looked just a little bit silly.
