Easy Graphic Design for Pastors

Here's the artwork for the latest sermon series at EPC. We don't have a person dedicated to graphic design, but I try to integrate imagery for each series between the bulletin, website, and Sunday PowerPoint. It's easy to do for any sized church, and if you're not into multimedia, artwork can still be a nice addition to the bulletin, newsletter, or a postcard.

1. Use Google Images to find large scale pictures. Some are copyrighted, but many are free, especially for non-profit use. Keep a tally of what you use so it can be credited at the end of your slideshow. Morguefile is another source for copyright-free images, as is your own photography.

2. Use PowerPoint or Keynote to create your slideshow and title slide. The title slide will be the image that connects the bulletins, website, slideshow, and more. By creating it within the slideshow instead of Photoshop or something else, you're saving a few steps.

3. Create the title slide, keeping it clean and uncluttered. If you're like us, our newsletters and bulletins are in black and white, so some images work better than others. Presentation Zen is my favorite source for design inspiration.

4. Export the title slide to JPEG. You can use it as-is, or crop it for the web. Our website has to use a certain sized-image to look right, so I made notes and now export the title slide using these steps so I always end up with the same size.

5. Now, you're done! A pro would use specialty software to create something really cool, but you're just a regular pastor with other stuff to do. If you spend 60-90 minutes on your image/theme and use it for a 6 week series, you've made good use of your time and can get back to Bible study or fiddling with the church copier.