Canva is a graphic design website that has a robust library of templates and customizable elements for anything – social media posts, bulletins, flyers, newsletters, infographics – you name it, they have templates for it! It’s free to create an account and can be used anywhere.  Adobe programs are available for use in the Digital Learning Lab (on the third floor of the Library, room 3132). Adobe Express offers a lot of templates and  might be the easiest program to jump into if you aren't familiar with Adobe programs. Photoshop and Indesign are professional standard programs for graphic design and offer the most versatility, but they have a steep learning curve.  Adobe does offer walkthrough tutorials for all of their programs though, so if you want to learn how to use them, there are lots of resources.  The other great thing about Adobe is that you also have access to their massive library of fonts and graphics through the DLL computers.

 

It’s helpful to start by thinking through the purpose behind design and why it’s important. Understanding why it matters helps ground the approach to design and communications in the church’s identity.  Here are some resources about design and branding for churches. 

 

 

Here are a few articles about design basics and principles.  There’s some overlap in the information, but each article also links out to different, more detailed resources that may be useful.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, Canva offers free instructional courses for graphic design.  They have a whole library of free courses.  Here are two that will help get you started with designing your own projects.