It’s pretty simple, actually. It’s obsessive attention to detail. I don’t think this just applies to graphic design, either. My friend, Micah Garman (@micahgarman) is a great guitar player. But there are a lot of great guitar players out there, but what makes Micah different is when he covers someone else’s music. He’s able to *quickly* reproduce the same sound as the original. Not just the same notes/melody/harmony. But the same sound.

This is the secret of good graphic design. Attention to detail. Granted, 96% of the population may not be able to tell the difference between Helvetica and Arial (typefaces). But to you, the designer, it should be glaringly obvious. And of course, this doesn’t apply to just fonts. Photos, clip art, layout designs, etc. It’s attention to detail. And it begins by learning to pay attention to the detail in OTHER people’s work. Read a magazine, and identify page layouts. Look at a product label, and note color usage. Pick out a billboard, and look at letter-spacing. Visit a wedding photographer’s blog, and grok their depth of field and rules of thirds.

Then look at YOUR layout with an objective eye. DaFont.com is a great resource for free fonts… but at what cost? Are you using Bleeding Cowboys because EVERYBODY is using it? Does the photography in your flyer look like it came out of a point-and-shoot camera? Are you using stock fonts, clipart, and templates?

The 4% that can tell the difference will appreciate your attention to detail, and will see that it was (or wasn’t) carefully crafted. And the remaining 96%? They may not be able to identify what specifically is right or wrong with a design, but they will *feel* whether it is professional or not.

The invite cards, worship guides, connection cards, offering envelopes, small group catalogs, etc. say a lot about your church. People are already getting an impression of, and making up their minds about, your church before they’ve even started reading the first three words.

Volunteers are crucial, no doubt about it. Start up churches probably require a much higher ratio of volunteers to attendees than a more established church with a large paid staff. ESPECIALLY portable churches. I don’t think this is a bad thing, in fact I believe that high volunteer ratio church can be very effective, because it frees up money for making more of an impact in the community. There is a major pitfall, though.
We recently ran a service at a new location that we’ve only been at for a few months. The day before the service I got a call from our sound guy for that service that he had a family emergency, and wouldn’t be able to make it. I wasn’t too worried about it though, because we have a couple of other sound volunteers who run other services who might be able to jump in, and worst case scenario, I could run sound. We got to the location a little earlier for set up, and the pinch-hitter sound guy showed up. But we suddenly realized we had a HUGE problem. The sound board had NO labels. Zero. Zip. Nada. All those channels, and no way of telling what instrument/mic was assigned to which channel. Regular sound guy had run this service long enough that he had all the channels memorized, but last-minute sound guy was lost at sea.

The biggest pitfall with relying on volunteers is allowing a single volunteer to take on too much responsibility. It’s SO easy to do, and oftentimes the good volunteers want to take the lionshare of the work. But replication is VITAL to the life of the church, more than just getting extra volunteers.
The number one thing to teach a volunteer is how to do the job with excellence. But as soon as they’ve got that down, the number two thing to teach them is to duplicate themselves. And YOUR job as the volunteer manager is to number one, make them feel appreciated for their time and skills, and number two, make sure they’re not taking on too much, and that they have someone they’re training up in their job.

Years and years of working as a graphic designer has taught me one thing: expertise in photoshop is no substitute for a talented artist.
I have a certain amount of artistic ability, otherwise I would be a poor choice as a graphic designer, but I’ve never considered myself an artist. We do, however, have some amazing artists in the church.
A young man, Ryan Manthey, is a PHENOMENAL photographer. He can take 10x better pictures with a camera phone than I can with my Canon 40D with expensive lenses. When he volunteers to take pictures at an event every shot is gold. And what’s important is that he makes the church look good!
We also have a gentleman in the church, Vladimir Dunayev, who is an antique painting restorer from Russia. What he can do with a paint brush and 60 minutes will blow your mind. For 18 months we struggled with set design issues inherent in a movie theater church. But then Vladimir started volunteering his talent, and now we have a veritable masterpiece as a backdrop for every series. Out of 1,200 churches participating in oneprayer.com I’m pretty sure we have the coolest backdrop! =)
All this to say I’m profoundly grateful for these amazing artists (naming just two of many) who refuse to bury their talent, and make us look great!