Let’s admit it, we all have a hit list. A list of people, places, or things that all have something in common. Like all the Mexican restaurants you’ve been to that immediately after finishing you can feel the beginnings of an epic battle about to be waged between the guacamole and your small intestine.

This however is a list of sites straight from my bookmarks that offer up media resources that I use in my print, motion, and audio design. Most if not all are a split pay-slash-free set up, with premium content for purchase but are also full of free high quality media goodness (some require an account, but again it’s free).

Be sure to book mark this page and any pages in the list that come in handy, and check back often as I will continue to add sites as I come across them.

Fonts:

DaFont – One of the bigger font sites that have given us such overused fonts like Bleeding Cowboys.

The League Of Moveable Type – A step above the rest in terms of quality of font faces. Vary high quality free and open source fonts. (Note: the people who run this site are pissed off at the web. Just a heads up, their tag line, which is in big, bold, in your face letters at the top of the home page consists of a expletive expressing said upsetness. If you just scroll right when you get to the page you can miss it.)

Stock Images, Vectors and Textures:

The Stock Exchange – The secret of the web! This site is the free (FREE!!!) version of the stock photo dominating site iStock Photo. It requires a free account, but this site is a must for any church ministry, non-profit, or anyone on a tight budget. Speaking of iStock Photo…

iStock Photo’s Weekly Archive – This page, I believe, isn’t even accessible on the iStock Photo home page. Every week (month for some) they have a free image, video clip, vector, and audio track for download. It is amazing that they give away the full quality image and not some scaled down version, the free video clips can even be downloaded in full 1080p HD!

Lost And Taken – Amazing site with free high quality textures. The use of raw textures has been in full swing for some time now, and I don’t seen an end to it any time soon.

All Silhouettes – An amazing site with literally thousands of free, high quality silhouettes.

The “ezzy” network – Much like Quiznos, the ‘ezzy’ network of sites has a funny name, but some serious free resources.

brusheezy – Free Photoshop Brushes

Vecteezy – Free vectors

Flashezzy – free flash projects

Freshezzy – Free Website Templates (this is getting kind of ridiculous but just to list it)

Media Militia – A stockpile of everything from textures, to Photoshop Brushes, to full Photoshop Project files you can use.

Audio:

The Free Sound Project - A massive library of sounds. Anything and everything you can possibly think of that you would need for any media project, you will probably find it here.

Just in time for Wednesday youth service, yea? Here’s a free video and two matching background images for text and Bible verses.

Shameless Plug:

If you like this – which I’m assuming you do since you’re here – feel free to papoose my other products at Sermon Spice.

And don’t forget to be social with me:
Facebook Fan Page
Twitter

Download Grungy Blue Storm Here!

Though i Stand Alone is…standing alone! But not for long! Because I am announcing from the rooftops and shouting it in the streets that my store/brand is – albeit a bit bare bones at the moment – open and launched!

I say brand because I’ve been selling videos on sermon spice for a hot minute and while this is a great way for me to help churches and youth groups by way of in your face motion graphics, I want to do more dang it!

TiSA is based off of the account of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the book of Daniel. Suffice it to say that these are crazy times we live in, it’s time to get crazy bold about what we do as Christian designers. Images of Jesus hugging a lamb with rainbows and candy canes in the blue clouded sky background just ain’t gonna cut it. I’ll even take it a step further and say we need to view this whole thing for what it is; as a down right spiritual attack on righteousness! With that mindset, it’s easier to get bold and do things that might normally fit in the “Not gonna fly” category of church design.

My goal is to eventually build up enough of a following (i.e. people buying my work) to where I can focus on this as my main outlet channel for my church work. The reason I’m with sermon spice is for this vary thing, they are already established and I can just jump on board. My only problem is that it’s just video, which is a great but still single means of enhancing the presentation of the Word.

Please give me some love by spreading the word to any pastors, youth group workers, or anyone else in the ministry that could use what I offer. Become a FaceBook Fan, Follow Me and TiSA on Twitter, whatever you can do to spread the word. One final note, I’m gonna be promoting this pretty hard, which is why I decided to make a separate Twitter account. Don’t want to blast my non-church design related designers.

Disclosure: To clear up any questions about the intentions of this article, I’m not directly speaking to my, or any other Church or Ministry but my overall assessment from my 7 years of secular design work and 2 years of ministry design work.

Unless you’ve been living under some sort of soundproof, airtight, bulletproof super rock, it should come as no surprise when I say: visual media is every-freaking-where. Yet, somewhere between Jesus saying “Go tell the world the Good News” and the local church still thinking clip art constitutes cutting edge graphics; the church seems to have gotten the mistaken idea that professional level visual media and design is an optional add on instead of a vital part of the ministry in this day and age.

So uhh… the wheels. They’re optional right?

The fact that visual media is vital in today’s culture seems to be another language to some. To say that today is a “sight and sound generation” is an understatement. My generation was a “sight and sound generation”. The latest studies show that — I’m not exaggerating here — this generation of children are having their minds “adapt to the new means of communication” present in today’s culture. In plain English, we’re witnessing the rise of a generation who’s brains are literally being reprogrammed. There are studies that show in severe cases, Youth can relate more to freaking emoticons they see in a text message than they can to human facial expressions. Do you hear me mom/dad/Pastor?! We are in a generation where kids emotionally and psychologically relate better to this:

than to you.

We have on our hands an “iPod” generation,  a.k.a Generation Y, a.k.a. The Disconnected Generation. We have kids who can completely isolate themselves any time, anywhere, at the push of a button. They can be in the middle of a crowd and be completely alone. The problem comes when this type of social disconnect begins to effect their outward response. Sorry to say but the argument of “body language” is dead to this generation.

How do you like the thought of preaching to a group who’s brains have been programed to not give any physical feedback what so ever, regardless of if they are having an emotional connection to something or not? They could be totally into what you are saying and getting ministered to, or they could not be listening to a word you are saying; and you wouldn’t be able to tell which is which by looking at them because their body language is the exact freakin’ same.

What the point? the point is that If we are going to reach the coming generations we need to seriously overhaul the approach we use to do said reaching. If you’re waiting for the alarming wake up call to stir you into action, well, I don’t have one. Ah ha, just kidding! I have a great one! The church is in direct competition with the secular world for peoples attention, especially youth, and the world know it. The enemy of God is on his A-game utilizing media, and he is smart enough to know to target them young. I live in  Austin Texas, I can’t drive 5 miles on any road without my eyes being drop kicked with build-boards for beer and advertisements featuring women who apparently have a deathly allergic reaction to clothing. The world is not bashful about throwing trash at us, why are we so tame and reserved when it comes to getting the Message out?

I tend to look at life in more of a “War being waged in the shadows between Good vs. Evil” light, you know, they way Jesus told us we should. So when I see a beer campaign featuring a certain local seven time Tour De France winner, my thoughts first explode because of the sheer stupidity of making the connection of beer to athletic prowess:

Quick, he’s dehydrated! Does anyone have a Michelob Ultra Light?!

Then, the exploded pieces of my thought process again explode into smaller pieces when I realize; how smart is it of the enemy to use someone that any kid who can remotely ride a bike looks up too to promote alcohol? Yet here we are, the church, thinking that visual media isn’t an important part of “promoting” the Gospel.

Even Jesus in his time had to speak in visual terms for people to get and understand. Why do you think he made the comparison of the Church body (us) to a lit candle and a city on a hill? Because we should be punching people in the face with attention grabbing effect, just like a light or a big city punches the darkness in the face!

pictured: darkness!

“Well, it’s no wonder he’s all about visual media and design in the church, he’s a freaking graphic designer” some of you may be thinking, but hear me out. I’m the first and loudest one to say, what I do as a designer will not and cannot change a culture. Let me first speak to any designers reading this that are helping the church. Plain and blunt, know your role, son! Strictly speaking of when you put yourself under the leadership of a pastor and their church, design is a ministry of helps. As much as I love what I do, we designers need to humble ourselves and admit we are not the front runners, the pastors and ministers are. We are called to undergird and assist them. Want do to your own thing that God’s put in your heart? No problem, just do it out from under the authority of a pastor or church. Am I saying to be rebellious? No, quite the contrary in fact because if you stay, then you are in rebellion to the Pastor who is over you. It’s his/her vision you are working toward, not yours.

Now to the pastors and leaders I respectfully (and awesomely!) address you. As much as I hoot and holler and scream and shout and do cartwheels and back flips about design and visual media, if you aren’t doing what you’re supposed to be doing; everything we do as designers is pointless, and potentially wrath of God educing! “Why slash how,” you ask? As co-laborers in Christ, take away your part and all we’re left with is our part; and you end up putting on a rock concert and a light show instead of having a meaningful experience with God. That’s the sort of thing that ripped open the Earths crust and swallowed people alive and screaming in the version of the Bible I read.

I wish I could say my experience in designing for youth groups and churches was all positive; but I have experienced working with pastors who put too much faith in what I could do. If the anointing and wisdom is lacking in the pastor, nothing we designers can do is going to supplement that.

Pastors, youth pastors and ministers are the ones who can change a culture, not us designers. Why? Because they are the ones called to be the leaders, they are the ones in the spotlight that everyone sees. It’s so easy to go from one extreme of neglect to the other extreme of expecting too much. What we designers can do is help pastors and ministers do their job. Exactly like what God anointed the skilled designers to do for Moses in building the Temple of God. So the question to the leaders then becomes not only “what are you bringing,” but more importantly “Are you letting us ‘skilled designers” do what God has anointed us to do, that is enhance what you’re bringing?”

The Biblical Example of Creatives And Designers Role:

This is from the account of Moses building the Tempe of God to house the Ark of the Covenant in Exodus. Way back when I feel God first showed me what my purpose for taking up space and oxygen was, I came to adopt a passage as my “calling” of sorts:

God’s Provision of the Skilled Designers:

The Lord spoke to Moses: “See, I have appointed by name Bezalel, of the tribe of Judah. I have filled him with God’s Spirit, with wisdom, understanding, and ability in every craft. To design artistic works in gold, silver, and bronze, to cut gemstones for mounting, and to carve wood. I have also selected Oholiab of the tribe of Dan, to be with him. I have placed wisdom within every skilled craftsman in order to make all that I have commanded you:

Exodus 31:1-6

Heck yeah! Called of God by name! Not no “Uhh… you. Yeah you. You know Photoshop? Yeah? Okay, you’ll do”. That right there should tell every one of our importance, and not to compare a professional designer to the neighbors kid who has a copy of Photoshop; or even taking someone of less talent because of cost or otherwise. Also, filled with his creative Spirit! Skill in every craft, but instead of metal and rocks we bust out artistic designs with Photoshop and After Effects Baby!

Yes, Yes Y-E-S!

But! Hold your horses there cowboy, and read that last part again:

“I have placed wisdom within every skilled craftsman (that’s us designers) in order to make all that I have commanded you:”

You who? That, my friend, is God speaking to Moses, not to the designers. God has blessed us with skill, to help the leader do what God has commanded them to do. If that’s not proof that we designers are here to help, not call the shots, I don’t know what is. I can hear the roar of pastors cheering and high-fiving. But, hold up a second Sir slash Ma’am.

This exact thing is echoed in Exodus 35, and in 38, giving us two or three witnesses to this positional standing of designers in the church. So we’re all happy and agree I’m not taking this out of context, right? Right.

Now, if you read in Exodus 36 you’ll notice that Moses didn’t try to tell the skilled designers how to do the plans God laid out, Moses passed the ball to them and said “get er done”. The next 2 whole chapters chronicle the work of Bezalel and Oholiab. Not much is said of Moses, yet we know he’s still the leader of this gang. I like to think that Moses sat back and sipped a goat milk latte through a ruby encrusted straw while thinking to himself “Man, these two guys sure know how to design me some Temple of God!” Then in Exodus 38:22 we read where this all comes together:

Bezalel son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, made all that the Lord commanded Moses.

The Lord commanded Moses, and Bezalel did the making. Not The Lord commanded Moses, and Moses did the making. Not even The Lord commanded Bezalel... What’s going on here? Everyone is working together, and everyone is being allowed to freely do what God has anointed and gifted them to do, all toward the same goal, what God had commanded.

I’m in no way trying to be disrespectful, as I don’t want to be smitten for murmuring against Gods anointed. What I am doing is making a heartfelt plea on behalf of Christian designers everywhere who are under any pastors leadership.

I said I wouldn’t flood the Earth again, but I didn’t say I wouldn’t flood your van!

If I don’t concern myself with the burden of the Sunday massage because I have faith and trust the God in the pastor to take care of it, why do I see pastors trying to take on the burden of telling the designers and media editors how to do what God has called and anointed them to do? God knows ya’ll are busy enough as is. (Read this article, it’s good!) As a designer there is no worse feeling than that of “The only reason I’m here is because I know how to use the software”. This pretty much makes us into pixel monkeys, with someone sitting right behind us saying “Make it look like this. Now move it down. Make it bigger. Bigger. Too Big…“. I’m tearing up just thinking about it!

I’m not anointed to preach, I’d probably wet my pants if I had to stand in front of a crowd and talk. I am however anointed to design and am anointed to know what will best visually illustrate a point and engage people in a way that’s not “face slapped in palm of hand” cheesy.

God had provided the creative people to help Moses. Obviously then we can gather that Moses wasn’t called to be a designer. If God provides you the pastor with a team of creative people: I sincerely ask, please, please, puh-leeeese, let them do what God has anointed them to do. We are here to help you, just as the skilled designers were there to help Moses, it’s your vision we have in mind. Yet even still, the pastor should be working toward Gods vision, not his own. And when it’s Gods vision, not a persons ambition, it’s easy to let go of the ball and pass it off because now we’re a team, not a boss and employee.

The pastors know the best way to present the word of God in a way that is relevant and meaningful to the world, even if it’s not how I the designer or someone else would word it. Likewise, we designers live, breath eat and sleep in visual communication, we know what will put whipped cream and two cherries on your message! But here is the catch that honestly I feel is the make it or break it sentence fragment of this whole article: are you ready?!

…even if it’s not exactly how you the pastor would do it.

Team – Together Everyone Achieves More. I’m patting myself on the back because that just came to me on the fly!

Are you a designer at a church? Are you a Pastor seeing the need for visual and graphic design in todays church? What do you think the role of media and design is in your ministry?

Included for your enjoyment:

• 12 Layered Photoshop PSD files
• 12 Layered Vector files (Illustrator and EPS Format)
• Adobe Photoshop Brush Library file (Includes 12 Opaque and 12 Translucent Presets)

Quick back story:

About two months ago I was in El Paso Texas  for two weeks tagging along with my brother to his school assembly programs. The break dancing scene in El Paso never seemed to go underground like it did a lot of places; you can be driving down the street and see a circle of dancers battling it out.

While there I met a dancer who is a friend of my brothers, Juan Tarango, aka B-boy Juan. (MySpace Facebook). One day we had some down time, so naturally everyone wanted to practice there moves. During the freestyle session I took my camera and snapped some pictures of everyone dancing. B-boy Juan was cool enough to let me use them to make some vector art and brush elements and give them out. Juan is a Christian break dancer who uses his skills to reach out to the youth in his area. If you are on facebook or MySpace definitely hit him up.

Samples:

Layer Screenshots:

Photoshop:

Illustrator:

Download Break! B-boy Image Pack

As always, leave your thoughts and comments below. If you create an awesome image and want it to be posted here, send an email with your info.

Visuals created in:

• Adobe After Effects CS4
• Photoshop CS3 Extended
• Texture background overlays created by the awesome Cheryl Tarrant.

Audio created in:

• Propellerhead Reason 3.0
• ReCycle 2.1

I know you’re going to skip through it, which is fine. Just be sure to catch from the last 10 seconds of the countdown to see the welcome animation.

Now seems to be as good a time as any to make an announcement.

For about the past two years I have volunteered my work free of charge to the teenage youth ministry, 12THiRTY, at my home church, and have also recently picked up helping the pre-teen ministry, 212º. The feeling of actually making a difference in a youths life with what I do is better than any money amount I could make charging for the designs.

That said, I am going to be shifting gears pretty drastically with what I am wishing to accomplish and focus on with my site. From here on I am going to be putting focus on design and media from a church and ministry standpoint with emphasis on this area I have come to love helping, youth groups. I have found that getting outside of myself and using my gifts and talent to pour into the lives of these next generations gives me the sense of meaning I’m looking for. Things seem to be a bit meaningless to me unless there is a greater purpose outside of myself:

The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem “Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.

Ecclesiastes 1:1-2

There you go, you know what’s in store, now leave some comments on the video below.

Depending on if you have actually looked through the rest of my site or not, you may or may not know that I also produce the occasional song here and there. While I don’t advertise or blog about this yet, I have an appreciation for audio production. EDM – Electronic Dance Music – has a special place in my heart, especially Trance. Something about a song that needs no words to convey a message and tell a story intrigues me. In my mind it’s dang near impossible to differentiate music and design. One is creating with elements you see, the other is creating with elements you hear.

Pictured: EDM Image Source

Whilst doing said activity one day, I found myself looking through one of my sound banks of drum samples. I was browsing through a folder of snare hits when something dawned on me. I said out loud to my roommate who was sitting next to me on his laptop “Man, I kinda wish I didn’t have 3,000 dang samples to flip through. It’s almost counterproductive to have…” I couldn’t even finish the statement. As I sat there staring a thousands of wave files I realized this wasn’t isolated to my music design. I fired up my font manager… sure enough I was greeted with thousands of fonts. I opened up Photoshop and got to the brush library dock, again, a never ending list of Photoshop brushes.

It’s hard to not end up with a massive list of fonts and brush presets real quick when you’re bombarded with tweets and posts advertising them. Don’t get me wrong I like having fonts and brushes, it’s just…do I need two thousand of them?

Two thousand eight hundred and ninety nine to be obsessive compulsive.

How does it do anything but slow down the design process when it takes 15 minutes to look through just the sans serif fonts you have? I think this falls in line with my recent post, about how there is a difference between learning something and actually being able to use that knowledge in a meaningful way. If I can’t use 20 fonts effectively, why do I think having ten times that is going to make a difference? If I haven’t used this grunge texture image pack, why do I need to download that grunge texture pack?

Maybe like me you thought “Hmm… that just might come in handy, someday…” There’s just one problem with downloading things with the mindset of “My super-villain levels of creative genius will figure out something to do with this”: it can lead to the notion that just because you have them means you’re good at using them, which is about like saying just because you can hold a hammer means you’re good at using a hammer:

So now you’re feeling the crushing guilt of having a million fonts or presets or whatever just for the sake of having them. Fear not! Here are two ways I myself have remedied this:

1) Stop downloading whatever it is you have a lot of.

Put down the digital smack! It can almost be addicting downloading every single free font or texture or whatever you come across, but don’t! Start to ween yourself off by using the ones you have now. This will not only improve your mad skills by making you actually use what you have at hand, but then as time goes by you actually find yourself saying more and more “I created that twice last week, why do I need to download a brush set or front of it?” Which leads to the second point:

2) Challenge yourself to create whatever you are about to download.

Be it texture or font, why not see if you can create it yourself? Hate to say it but more than 50% of the free fonts out there are just variations of another free font or a font you already have. There’s great free fonts out there no doubt, but challenge yourself to create the font or texture you are about to download if it looks like something you may know how to do. If the font is just an Arial style font that’s distressed, try to make it yourself in illustrator or Photoshop like I did here in this t-shirt design tutorial (watch part 1 here) I did a while back. Honestly it’s not that hard, it may be you just never thought to do it or never tried.

A vary positive side effect to doing the above suggestions is: you get better! If you continue to just find pre-made design elements and never venture out to try to make something totally from scratch, you will never truly know the level you are at. And if you don’t know where you’re at how can you know where you need to be going?

What design resources do you have a million of on your computer that you haven’t even seen half of? If they all disappeared would you even notice?

]]> http://robertanthonyperez.com/blog/too-much-of-a-good-thing-and-why-it-can-suck/feed 4 http://robertanthonyperez.com/blog/where-do-great-designers-come-from http://robertanthonyperez.com/blog/where-do-great-designers-come-from#comments Mon, 22 Feb 2010 07:39:17 +0000 Robert Anthony http://robertanthonyperez.com/blog/?p=809

AMERICA BABY! U-S-A! U-S-A!

I kid, I kid. While the good old U.S. of A. has indeed given us many a great designer, you can’t fall into the trap of thinking any one geographical location is more creatively fertile than the next. Why, just last night I found myself watching an awe inspiring film about two French chefs defying the odds, rising against the sea of opposition to fulfill their callings, nay, destinies as culinary artists.

What sophisticated, Masterpiece Theater-esque of a film was it, you ask?

Ratatouille.

Pictured: deep philosophical thought at it’s finest.

Okay, so maybe this isn’t your “Sip a thimble of tea while disusing the ramifications of the human endeavor in a post modern society” type of movie. But humor me for a second. In the last scene where the evil “Grim Eater” Anton Ego is vanquished by his memories of sucking at riding a bike during his childhood; he makes a surprisingly profound statement:

“Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.”

There is a statement in the Bible that has seemed to trip a lot of people up. That statement is that we as humans have been “Created in the image of God.” I’ve heard explanations of this ranging from the simple idea that God “looks” like a human (two arms, two legs, one head, so on), to the retarded idea that “well then, I must be God.” My understanding of this being created in the image of God is a multi-faced one, but one of them is this: That as humans we have inside us the nature and characteristics that you find God to have by reading His Word. And you know what’s amazing? You don’t need to read but five words into the Bible to find one of these character traits:

In the beginning, God created…

Before humans, before sin, before Jesus saving our butts, before everything; what was God up to? He was being creative. He was layering the universe and stamping galaxies in place. It’s my belief that each one of us, not taking into account our individual callings, or our personal level of developing our talent, has just as much creative gas in the tank as the next.

So if each of us has the same deposited creative juice, why is it some in the design community rise above the rest and shine?  Two points I want to make:

1) Opportunity

Could it be that if one designer seemingly isn’t as good as the next, it’s simply because he or she has never been given the opportunity? We’re quick to blast a n00b who is trying to act like they know something and can’t back it up, that’s understandable. But what about the designer trying desperately to get noticed like a short person in a crowd of tall people? Who’s to say they’re not a sleeping giant awakening? How do you know that there is not a million dollar design at your finger tips if you’ve never been given the chance at creating a million dollar design? Or, what if you have never treated you’re skill like I was worth a million dollars to begin with?

2) Personal Development

Or what if he or she hasn’t put time and effort into developing their skill? Practice makes perfect is a saying we’ve all heard, right? But notice that the saying isn’t Knowledge makes perfect. There’s a difference between learning and gaining knowledge. You can watch tutorial after tutorial, and you can even learn how to use the software or hardware. But how does learning Photoshop inside and out make you creative? It doesn’t, not until you take that knowledge and apply it (dang if that can’t be used in every area of life!) How do I know? Well, because I fell for this trick. I’ve watched many a Lynda.com tutorial, but I wasn’t feeling satisfied for some reason. I had a creative backup, I wasn’t feeling like I was getting the creativity inside me out. Happy to say that upon realizing this I’ve made the corrections and I am on the road to once again loving what I do. That’s for another article though.

So what makes a great designer? Where do they come from? They come from you. They come from me. They come from anyone who will realize the fact that they have interwoven into their being what it takes to be a great designer. This could easily spin off into a dozen topics of education, skill vs. talent and if there’s a difference and so on, but I’ll leave that for the comments below. My point is that each one of us is potentially a great designer. Whether or not you actually become a great designer I feel is up to you.

What do you think makes a great designer or creative person what they are? Do you know anyone who you see more potential in them than they do themselves?

We designer slash bloggers are busy little bees, unable to be bothered with frivolous activities like eating or taking showers. We wake up and grab the nearest Internet capable device, check our email, shoot off some tweets, start a project, check some stats, leave some comments, and talk on the phone, all before getting out of bed. Time seems to just fly by and before you know it, it’s either time to go to work, or it’s midnight.

Or both.

“I will catch you, Comic Sansman!”

In an effort to get the maximum out of your time, you do what any logical person would do: you start to think where you can cut corners. In a stroke of genius that would make Albert Einstein turn in his grave with jealous rage , you cleverly decide that your social media presence, the stepchild of all your marketing endeavors, can take one for the team. Starting with Twitter.

You sign up at auto-tweetinator.com, select a few followers to randomly auto retweet, compose a few tweets and set them to reoccurring, and finally set your new blog posts to send out an auto tweet. You then sit back with your feet kicked up, basking in your social media ingenuity as your Twitter account turned death cannon sprays your followers with a hellfire of tweets.

Some time later you check up on your account:

Wha?! What went wrong? The problem with an over use of auto-tweets is that it completely misses the point of Twitter or any social media platform. People follow you to talk to you, not get pelted with mindless auto-tweets or scheduled retweets.

Relying on auto-tweets for the bulk of your interaction:

• Takes out the social interaction between you and your followers
• Makes it hard for you to provide relevant, consistent content if auto retweeting
• Doesn’t allow you to customize your tweets with hashtags or a catchy titles to attract readers slash followers
• Worst of all it can make your followers feel like just a number to you, which can lead to loss of followers

Now we can all use some extra time, and by no means am I saying you can’t use tools or services to truncate and speed up the time it takes to do stuff (heck, I’m pre-composing this on my iPhone at 2:30 in the morning laying on my bed). The key is to work smarter and in a way that won’t negatively affect your presence online.

I’ll admit that I’m looking into a way to speed up the time spent keeping up with social media, but I learned real quick I was going to shoot myself if I resorted to auto-tweets. I did come across two ways that I think are better than auto-tweeting services, but still speed things up a bit, or at least let me manage the time more effectively without sacrificing the interaction with people.

1) Use a tweet scheduler

What’s the difference between a scheduler and an auto tweeter? A scheduler means you’re still in the loop, they’re your tweets, with a link to an article you read and commented on maybe, and not just some random retweet or template.

Using a tweet scheduler is a good way to still have the social interaction, but still let you forget about it for a while if you find yourself particularly busy or away from the computer. The one Tweet scheduler I liked was an online service called Twaitter. This was a pretty well rounded tweet scheduling service with all the functions you’d expect from twitter, along with a multi lingual spell checker, a URL shortener, and a translator all right in the compsition area. The reason I opted out of this one was because of my iPhone, which I do the most of my tweeting from.

Update: It just dawned on me that whilst I slumber, there is half the world that is awake that I otherwise would never get to tweet at. It’s time to make contact, I’m going to schedule some tweets to send out and see what response I get. It’s one thing to dig up a tweet, but If it’s fresh out the oven… you get the idea.

2) Save tweets as drafts to send out later.

This is kind of a manual scheduler, but you will be surprised at how it helps. This is my new preferred way of making sure I am providing good content as well as staying, uh, sociable, and in the conversation. The thing I like about this way is that I can keep my tweet clips loaded and choose when and which tweets to fire off; and also because I am manually doing it, I can still do on the fly tweets or retweets, or even bookmark an article to read later on; thus keeping the rodeo going. The one I’m trying out on my iPhone is Called Twittelator, so far I’m pretty impressed at the ease of saving off drafts for later tweeting.

I should clear up that, like I said, if I’m retweeting a tweet about an article, I try to actually take the time and read the thing and comment on it. It’s kind of annoying having an article retweeted a million times and it get only 5 comments (hint hint). Also I think this retweet-articles-you-comment-on workflow is a good strategy  to get some exposure for yourself. Taking the time to actually read an article and leave a relevant comment before retweeting it can add up, so dedicating a single block of time to take a spin on the blogocoaster can free up your day.

What say you? Do you think auto tweeting is good social marketing? Have at you below in the comments.

I came across a good saying in this book I’m reading:

Now to a laborer, his wages are not counted as a favor or a gift, but as an obligation (something owed to him) – Romans 4:4 AMP

It seems to be a popular idea now days that compensation is some kind of reward or gift that designers could, if they show the right stuff, be as lucky as to receive from the kind and benevolent hand of the “clients”. This is painfully obvious in the so called design contest or crowdsourcing arenas.

look, I understand that time and technologies change, and that innovations make what designers do a lot easier. But that shouldn’t degrade what we do, if anything it should make us that much more valuable. If a Super Walmart opens up in your town, does that completely null and void all the mom and pop shops that have been there since the dawn of time? I suppose if you are just looking at the price and completely ignoring everything else, then maybe.

Running with this analogy of corporate chains vs. mom and pop shops, I propose three questions to ask yourself when considering getting involved in a design contest or crowdsourcing job; whether as a designer or a client needing a designer:

Question 1: What about the quality?

Yes, that is every Photoshop layer effect.

And what are you doing designing a logo in Photoshop in the first place?! Things cost what they do for a reason. Sure a piece of furniture may cost three times as much at a local woodwork shop than it does at IKEA, but that’s because it was crafted by a single guy from raw lumber to final fixture. Every single detail about it was noted, nothing was overlooked or not taken into account during the designing of it. That’s not taking into account the custom requests if the person was involved with the designer.

So what’s your point?

The higher cost is justified by the above average quality and attention to detail. “You get what you pay for” holds true in all areas of the consumer market, including design. The effects of bad design and branding will show sooner or later.

“We will be the king of fine Vietnamese cuisine! I give you, The Pho King Restaurant!”

Question 2: What about the personal attention?

This one can go either way for the client or the designer. You walk into a big chain store and more often than not the only ones who take notice are the security cameras. By no means am I saying that they don’t value your business, but lets be honest, you’re just another face to them. Me deciding to not shop at Walmart isn’t going to even show up on their radar. Likewise, what’s one designer not participating in a contest when there are 30 others giving design after design? Or what’s one unsatisfied customer when you have a pool of customers clamoring for design comps?

Design contests are designed (ha!) to do just that, keep the personal side to non-existent. They’re not there to build a meaningful client-designer relationship. For the contest holder (Client) it’s “I need my design fix as soon as possible, for as cheap as possible.” For the ‘designer’, what’s a crappy design job when you will never hear from or have to deal with the client again after you get paid?

Now what happens when you walk into a local mom and pop shop that’s been there since forever? “Hey, (Whatever your name is)! How have you been? How’s the family? Glad to hear it, come, my wife just made home made cookies and home made milk. Sit here in my home made La-Z-boy.”

I’ve seen more caring and functional relationships on COPS: Too raw for T.V. than some of these design contest sites.

Editing Department: “What? No. they’ll get the analogy.”

Is focusing on cost and time frame bad in and of itself? I don’t think so. That’s why God invented deadlines and budgets. What is bad is taking one single aspect of a whole bundle or package and trying to make it work all by itself. That’s like trying to make a marriage work based solely on the wonderful, wonderful sex. It’s not gonna last.

Editing Department: “Wha- NO! NO NO NO! What are you, five years old?!”

But then again like I said, neither sides main goal is to build a meaningful relationship with you, so… in a way… moving on.

So what’s your point?

Design contests  and crowdsourcing neglect the personal attention you get when working with a single designer. They focus mainly on the cost, which is only one aspect of the whole design-client relationship.

Question 3: What about the customer support?

There have been cases where clients and designers both have been burned when using a design contest or crowdsourcing site. I’m not going to take a side on this one. The sad reality is it’s a lose-lose scenario. You can read about shady contest holders just as much as shady designers trying to pull a fast one. The point is, Where’s the love? where is that thing called service?

Case in point:

whist writing this article I was going to link to a post on a crowdsourcing site that was in limbo that I read a while back, because the contest holders went all AWOL on everyone for a month, leaving the designers asking what’s up. The contest has since been settled and a designer was paid, but only after the website administrators got involved:

PROJECT UPDATE: We know that this project is past-due and we’re on it! Our customer service team will get in touch with the buyer right away to help the buyer pick their favorite design and complete the project. Thanks so much for your patience and understanding as we get this project back on track.

crowdSPRING

Patience and understanding. I wonder what that looks like when faced with the possibility of having done multiple t-shirt designs, and then the guys just up and bail on you after getting what they wanted.

That’s about right.

So what’s your point?

All in all, the nature of design contests and crowdsourcing isn’t one that puts any kind of focus or thought past the design at hand. Once it’s done, you got your design but nothing else. For big companies these types of services can seem pretty appealing, but if you look at it in the light of a relationship instead of “your four and no more”, you can see how a company can suffer in the long run by not building a solid working relationship with a designer/designers.

It’s the difference between standing on a rock, or standing on sand. One solid designer, one whom you know has the best interest of your company and it’s success in mind. One who you can discuss and work out any problems with and get personal and heartfelt service from.

Or a bunch of faceless personalities from a crowdsourcing site.

What else do you feel is lacking from these design contest and crowdsourcing sites? Do you have any advice for a person or company considering using one of these services? Have at it below.