Cut Mailing Costs in Half
Christian Care Ministry / Medi-Share is a health sharing organization, connecting Christians who want to live out the biblical mandate to carry one another’s burdens by sharing in each other’s medical expenses. Besides sharing medical bills, members encourage and pray for one another. They are supported by an organization that provides health education and promotes biblical living. Since 1993 more than $775 million in healthcare costs have been shared or discounted.
As part of the educational mission of Christian Care Ministry, they produce a quarterly newsletter filled with encouragement, tips for healthy living, testimonies and ministry information. When I started designing their newsletter it was a 2-color, 8-page, 8.5″ x 11″ document. After a few issues I suggested a redesign with a 4-color, 12-page, oblong 6″ x 11″ booklet. Color printing has become extremely affordable in recent years, helping to keep the print production costs roughly the same as what they had been for 2-color, even with adding 4 pages.
When mailing bulk pieces, the U.S. Postal Service uses seven classifications to determine the postal rate: letters (machinable and non-machineable), flats (machinable and non-machineable), postcards, machinable parcels, irregular parcels, marketing parcels and outside parcels. Don’t let the names fool you, the classifications are determined by size and shape more than content; for example, a postcard is classified as a letter if it is a rectangle and larger than 4.25″ x 6″ or a flat if it is square instead of rectangle. A postcard is the most economical rate, then letter, then flat.
By redesigning the newsletter to a 6″ x 11″ booklet instead of an 8.5″ x 11″ booklet, the ministry saved almost 50% in the cost of mailing their newsletter. I redesigned World Hope International’s newsletter to this money-saving format as well.
To see other examples of my publication design, click here.
Crooked Tree Cards
Crooked Tree Cards are personalized photo greeting cards, created out of my love for telling stories with photos and helping people stay connected — because sometimes Facebook just isn’t enough. Receiving something personal in the mailbox shows your recipient that they are important to you.
There are many options for creating photo greeting cards. For most of them you drop your photos into pre-designed templates with few if any options for making changes. A few sites give you a little more control if you are a creative person and want to invest the time to create your own design based on their templates. By ordering from CrookedTreeCards.com, you have the benefit of working with a professional designer who can fully customize a design for your needs, including color correcting, editing and enhancing your photos.
The process is simple: You select a design, type a greeting and a two or three paragraph letter (or family update) if you choose to include it, then upload your photos through the web site. You can also let me know if you have any special design requests like changing the background color or changing a design from three photos to four. Within 48 hours you will receive a proof of your design. When you are completely happy with the design, we send your design to print and you receive your cards in about a week.
And just in case you forgot anyone special on your list, you can order a photo collage greeting for Facebook, too.
Here are some of our most popular designs:
I’ve also create completely custom cards:
Stop by Crooked Tree Cards and browse the collection of fully customizable designs today. Read about the logo development for the online store here.
Appeal to the heart
Direct mail appeals are the lifeline for nonprofit organizations to connect with and invite donors to partner with them in their ministries. I’ve often said designs that reach the heart have sticking power in the mind. Once in the mind, donors can make a decision about how to respond. Above is a recent appeal from World Hope International.
Three Key Things to Remember about Appeals
- An appeal isn’t really about you. It’s about the difference your donors can make when they partner with you. Donors want to be a part of making a difference in the world and you are simply the conduit. Be sure to focus on them and the outcome when they partner with you.
- Tell a story. The language of the heart is stories, so reach donors’ hearts by telling great stories. Remember number 1 above: be sure to connect them to the story by telling the difference they make in the story. One effective way to tell stories is to use quality photos. Another popular trend right now for nonprofits is to tell the story through statistics showing the need or proving the effectiveness of their methods. Just remember the goal is to get them to participate in what you are doing and people make that decision with their heart first, so make the stats relatable.
- Make a clear “ask.” For the most effective appeal, be specific about how people can respond, the difference they can make if they respond and an easy way to give/signup to volunteer/spread the word (or whatever action you need from them.) Keep the ask simple with one need and one type of response. Ministry needs are great, but be careful not to stuff your appeal with requests — it waters down the impact of the appeal and invites indecision.
In the “Chen’s Story” appeal raising money for World Hope International’s anti-trafficking efforts, we weren’t able to use photographs of Chen or girls like her at the Assessment Center because of the need to protect the women and children from further exploitation, so we used artwork from some art therapy sessions that the girls had participated in while at the Assessment Center. The result was perhaps even more effective than if we had used photos because the artwork expressed their hearts and therefore gripped the hearts of donors.
To view other appeal designs, click here.
Creating a Unified Look to Support Brand Strategy
One of the challenges organizations face is creating a unified vision of their brand strategy across its many expressions: brochures, newsletter, stationery, direct mail appeals, web site, signage and trade show graphics. This can be accomplished in different ways, but some of the tools designers can employ are a consistent fonts and color palette, a repeated shape (as a graphic element or even shape of the finished piece) or other graphic elements like a page border, ghosted image or background texture.
For World Hope International, we chose a consistent color palette, fonts, color blocks, bright colorful photos of people and similarly styled icons to tie together their general brochure, program brochures and newsletter with annual report.
General Brochure
Program Brochures
Newsletter with Annual Report
To view more brochure designs, click here.
Media Package for Project Legacy
Project Legacy is a project of Deeper Life Today to conserve and share the biblical teachings of Dr. W. F. Kumuyi with a wider audience in North America by having his sermons preserved and recorded by professional voice actors, eliminating the stumbling block that a foreign accent can be to American listeners. This media package was created to hand out to people at conferences who have benefited from his teachings asking them to invest in this legacy project.
I also worked with their media team to create a coordinating identity for Deeper Life Today and Project Legacy. For the media ministry’s logo, the open Bible forms the ground as a metaphor for the Word of God providing a rich soil for the tree (the Christian life) with roots going deep resulting in healthy growth. In the Project Legacy logo, the same tree ties the project visually to the ministry and symbolizes reaching out to others.
Click these links to view other appeal projects and logos.
NRB Convention Banners
The NRB Convention is an exciting mix of Christians in media ministry: film, television, radio, church media and the web. I was privileged to design their membership campaign banners to hang in the main lobby and atrium at the Gaylord Opryland Convention Center. The colors support their corporate brand and the photos represent a mix of media professionals — their membership demographic. The type on an angle bleeding across multiple banners helps to grab attention.
I am grateful for NRB. They are working to keep the airwaves and internet open for the spread of the Gospel. And on a personal level, they been a loyal client for over a decade, and as an exhibitor in their exposition, I have made significant connections with people that have also turned into long-standing client relationships.
Alora Safari Logo
I created this logo for a dear friend’s etsy shop. She creates amazing tutu dresses and accessories for special occasions. The giraffes are a nod to her former shop name, The Pink Giraffe, which she was forced to change because of a trademark issue. She chose a new name, Alora (dream) Safari (journey), which refers to her dream to grow her family through adoption, hence the nurturing image of a mother and baby giraffe. The dots instead of a more realistic giraffe pattern adds an element of fun.
Here are some other logo concepts that were developed in the design process:
More of my logo designs can be viewed here.
Logo Development – Crooked Tree Cards
I started Crooked Tree Cards, an online store for personalized photo greeting cards, out of a strong belief that relationships are priceless.
My life both as a child and adult has involved frequent moves. However, the one place that our family continues to come back to is a small inland lake in Northern Michigan. As one drives the winding road back to our cabin, everyone in the car tries to be the first to spy the crooked tree! Time spent at the cabin always means sharing time with our extended family and friends.
We discovered that the relationships we have nurtured along the way are priceless! And sometimes FaceBook isn’t enough to stay connected.
I’ve always loved photos and finding the stories in them, but our family pictures always ended up stored in boxes. As a graphic designer, digital scrapbooks were a natural solution to share some special photos. It wasn’t long before I was creating photo collages to share our family’s pictures in our annual Christmas letter. Soon after that I began Crooked Tree Cards.
My goal is to help people stay connected to those priceless relationships in their lives through beautifully crafted photo greeting cards.
My initial logo concepts fell short capturing my vision for the online storefront. At first, it seems logical to start with an illustration of the “Crooked Tree” as I remember it from my childhood since that’s where the name comes from. But it was such an odd looking tree, it didn’t seem to matter whether I illustrated it realistically or abstractly, it would be difficult for anyone who wasn’t familiar with the strange tree to connect with it. So, the logical solution was to try a logotype, but I wasn’t satisfied with those results either.
One of the hardest things I’ve had to do as a graphic designer is to design anything for myself. I realized in the middle of this project that the reason I was struggling so much was because I had failed to work the process I do with my clients to get at the heart of what their organization is all about and communicate that in the logo. So I went back to the drawing board and came up with this:
The core value of the business and the reason sending cards is important is because “relationships are priceless.” In illustrating the tree for the logo, I bent the trunk to suggest a heart. The branches reach out toward others with heart-shaped fruit. The font is friendly with little loops in some of the letters reaching out toward the next one.
You can view more of my logo/identity work here.
Family Cabin Photo Book
Our family of 12 gathered at Heart’s Desire on Crooked Lake in July 2012 to celebrate my parent’s 50 years of marriage and a legacy of deep love and enduring faith. Who knew 39 years earlier when the little cabin was purchased with a small inheritance that it would become a rock for our family, a “home” for a family whose journey would involve several moves and eventually scatter us across North America? We’ve truly been blessed with the desires of our hearts: God’s presence in our lives, a loving family and a wonderful place to enjoy both.
We asked my very talented cousin, Kendra Stanley Mills, to come and photograph our family for the day. It wasn’t a particularly special day — except that we were together, which happens too seldom since we live several states apart. Kendra is a photojournalist and she’s in her element when she can be a fly on the wall and capture what she sees happening around her — simple little moments that tell big stories. More than recording activities of the day, her photos capture little interactions and what it feels like being together at our favorite spot on earth. She did portraits, too, but my favorite photos are the ones where we get a peak at her unique vision. I had so much fun going through the photos and creating this photo book as a gift for the family.
The hammock shot with one of the kids is pretty spectacular.
What better time to capture our family interacting with one another than dinner time. I love that Kendra took photos of the food in some vintage serving dishes that have been in the family at least as long as I have. I get the warm fuzzies when I see them.
Family portraits are important, but I highly recommend finding a photojournalist (or hiring Kendra!) for some priceless vignettes of everyday life.
You can view some of my other photo books here.