Design Standards
One of the more consistent issues I’ve seen in the Christian web design world (and artistic world in general) has been the “standards” we tend to use for what is good. In the Christian world, we tend to compare our art and creativity with other Christians who are doing the same thing.
Unfortunately, a lot of times it’s like playing sports at a small school. You know, those schools where you can be a half-way athletic person and play varsity football, basketball, tennis, lacrosse, golf, be chess team captain, voted prom king, student body president, and even most likely to succeed.
I propose it’s time we begin looking a little further outside our creative comfort zone. Here’s a great place to start…
As a church or para-church, the easiest (and maybe most obvious) place to look when searching for design ideas is at other church or ministry websites. This is why websites such as www.churchbeauty.com are so popular to churches.
Instead of perusing sites like this (which are still good sites that fulfill a big need for churches), check out sites like www.strangefruits.nl. Anyone can tell the difference in design abilities between these two sites:
There’s a whole big, bright world out there full of creative genius to explore. Let’s not limit our designing to what works in our little community just because it’s better than the other church sites out there.
Explore strangefuits.nl and be mesmerized, discouraged, encouraged and blown away like we are every time we hop on it.
Posted on June 17th, 2008 under Our Opinions by Jim with 3 comments.
3 Comments
What I am curious is how to take the inspiration from creative websites like that in strangefruits and implement them into a church/para-church setting… I am very fond of unique sites that are set apart from the norm, but how to do it is something I’m not sure of yet…
Yeah- I hear ya.
I really think the first step is infusing creativity into the church/para-church setting. The problem is that in order to do this it takes artists who are willing to work hard…
In the design world, when you combine creativity with passion and work ethic, you have typically have something people are inspired by.
[...] you’d like to keep dwelling on this topic, check out Jim’s post about design standards, (and soon, our upcoming post about our new philosophy on social [...]