Fire of God Imaging: Christ Community Church, Logo

14 April 2009

Christ Community Church, Logo

This is my first logo design, and it shows in ways. But there are elements that I really like such as the three Cs interlaced like Celtic knot work. Besides, it's my first, you know?

In the largely bygone world of professional dedicated prepress houses there wasn't much opportunity for creative work; that was all settled further upstream. So when this first logo request was brought to me it was a bit outside my comfort zone. But, that was right after God came (see sidebar), and practically everything happening in every direction of my life was outside of my comfort zone; like getting hooked up with an evangelistic food ministry in a predominantly black downtown housing project, just down the road from the Federal Penitentiary. Like the housing project, I ignored the fact that I really didn't know what I was doing and just got busy doing it.

I really don't like the font or typesetting for "Christ Community Church." My inexperience definitely showed there. The point of capitalizing "Christ" but not "community," or "church" was to emphasize the preeminence of Jesus. The meaning seemed obvious to me at the time, but now it looks amateurish, almost like a typographical error; and the capital "C" in "Christ" just doesn't fit on the compass rose. Maybe I would use a Copperplate variant now. The whole thing is a bit busy. Probably I would try to sell just the three interlocked Cs with little more.

Having a lot more Bible and Footsteps-with-God under my belt, I now seriously question the propriety of churches and para-church ministries having a bunch of little extra-biblical logos to define and separate themselves. The early Christians "turned the world upside down," and their practices were very simple: one minimalistic logo for the whole enterprise was more than sufficient. The current situation looks more like commercial competition.

What identity do you need the world to see?

Photoshop • Museum Quality Photo Restoration • High-end Retouching & Photo Manipulation • Illustration • Logo Design • Graphic Design

fireofgodimaging@gmail.com

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About Me

I worked for years in the Pre-press trade.

Starting at a German owned company that lived and breathed process control, I worked my way upward from there learning the trade. Never turned down OT, and usually asked for more. I thought that was what you were supposed to do. I advanced in pay–and into the city–eventually specializing in high-end Photoshop work. The retouching suites there looked like a set from CSI: cushy leather chairs, nice stereo systems, stainless steel, black walls and just a hint of purple glow from black-light accents. Clients from national ad agencies paid a couple hundred dollars an hour to walk in and sit down with the retouchers. Very avant-garde.

Then God came.

It was a literal epiphany. I was minding my own business at work late one night when the Holy Spirit of God filled the room with a presence so thick...it wasn't visible, and you couldn't smell it, but it was heavy–like the room was filled with thick smoke. I could barely breathe and time stood still on that spot while all the world silently revolved around me. The finger of God touched the very heart of my being; I gave my life completely into His hands.

When it was gone, I was a completely different man.

Well, very different anyway. And getting more completely different. Work I had taken pride in I now felt convicted by. And since such work is common fare in the world of printing you might imagine there isn't much room for conviction about righteousness and sin. Of course, the true majority of work wasn't sensual revealing stuff, but mundane staples like important fried chicken, major jet liners in majestic vistas, and the famousest of soft drink brands. But the sensual stuff was now a real sticking point, and where I had fit in nicely before, it was like oil and water. Or maybe more like water and old grimy built up grease that really smells from not being cleaned in a long, long time; but the people are so used to it that they have no idea what you are talking about, and you can't understand why the health inspector hasn't shut the place down a long time ago.

Well, The Health Inspector is going to shut the whole thing down pretty soon.

But in the mean time I had this peculiar situation: Talent, skill, and experience in a field for which my relationship with God made me unsuitable for regular employment; The Holy Spirit like an Olympic home remodeling team tearing out the old and building new; And a family that had a well fed bank account, but was dried up and starving for anything that might be called a husband or a father. So I walked away from my primo position downtown, and took about a year sabbatical with my wife and (now) five children and God–until the money ran out. After that I learned trim carpentry, and branched out into some things I never had time or inclination to try before in the pre-press grind, like logo design, graphic design, and photo restoration. (That one I especially like: taking old battered and faded memories from the past and recapturing them for the future. That's much more satisfying than helping an older gentleman with phony military status sell buckets of chicken.)

Along the way I have learned a few things.

The average American family doesn't need nearly as much money as we think we do. Children do better in the daily presence of their mother and father than with all the schooling, entertainment, activities, programs, gaming, friends and even Vacation Bible School that you can think up. Wives need their husbands at home as much as children need their mothers at home. Men were not intended to spend the majority of their lives out of the home interacting with women to whom they are not married. People waste their time and money on hobbies and entertainment and leisure-time activities galore trying to fill their lives with meaning because they have abandoned A: God, and B: The Home; and thus are spending their 40 - 60 hours a week on a hamster wheel building nothing with any real meaning. The Western church is far, far afield of the Bible we think we believe, running hard after the society we think we're separated from, yelling, "Wait for us! Wait for us! Wait for us!" while waiving our Bibles in the air instead of reading them.

Photoshop • Museum Quality Photo Restoration • High-end Retouching & Photo Manipulation • Illustration • Logo Design • Graphic Design

Fire of God Imaging

Fire of God Imaging

14 April 2009

Christ Community Church, Logo

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