Unsure of what that restaurant is? Its a McDonald’s in Tokyo (website) that is one of a small few design to introduce the Japanese to the Quarter Pounder. So often in marketing we hear about branding and image recognition being the important purpose of our brand. That is the reason companies spend so much money on television and magazine advertisements.

I love the minimal design, simply a red line around the black framed windows, one photo, and some nice brushed steel.

(via @nedwright, Core77)

Part of my daily reading includes a number of top design blogs which point their readers to portfolios of their peers on a regular basis. I have long loved art and design on the digital platform.

Check out I Am Always Hungry. The design is brilliant, and the work is very impressive. My only complaint is the clock on their site that reminded me I spent 35 minutes looking at everything they had posted.

If you have a few minutes check it out, beautiful.

30 Essential PDF Documents ever designer should download

You can never have enough references, resources, and samples to look to for help or inspiration.

This raises the question, How do we, as the church, stay relevant in the info age?

I understand some people have strong theological opposition to the Internet and the progression of technology. If that’s you, the rest of this post will just upset you. If not, keep reading.

First we have to embrace technology, and quickly. The church has gotten into the habit of letting technological things blow past us until its obvious we need to get on board with them.

So what does this embracing look like?

• Dynamic Organization websites (with databases and interactivity)
• Fully utilization of digital delivery whenever possible (Content Re-purposing!)
• Creating digital, gospel based, content people under 30 want to experience
• Digital Transparency of leadership (through personal websites/blogs/etc.)

The list could keep going but for the sake of brevity these are the big three ways the Church is extremely lacking overall in the info age.

Lets re-cap on `the Church` for a second. The Church is the largest organization in the world (though with many fractions within its structure). The Christian faith is the most widely accepted faith in the world. OK, got that?

Now why does the Church with these incredible numbers have such a pathetic presence in the Information

Age? Priorities…

Shifting our priorities

As Christians, and even more-so as Church leaders, we have an obligation to steward our resources. So lets be smart about how we use our money and people.

The goal set for for us at the end of the gospels is to proclaim the good news to everyone. With technology this can be easier than ever with the Internet. The world is funding programs like OLPC which has delivered 725,000 laptops to children the world over (list in next paragraph). Intel also is in the market with their classmate PC and just sold 500,000 laptops to Portugal yesterday.

If we want to reach out to countries like Uruguay, Peru,  Haiti, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Mongolia, Afghanistan, Mexico what better way then to capture the imagination and hearts of the youth these Million+ laptops will reach. They will all have Internet access, and the laptops hope to close the technological divide.

To do this we have to invest in technologies and content (Content is King!) to reach the world.

Why can’t we do virtual discipleship with children in countries and cities we can seldom reach with physical people?

To do this

We have to do it well, this means investing some serious money, efforts in doing this. I believe that there needs to be another movement like the Wesleyan bible translators for the Information age. Their goal will be to make the Gospel accessible and appealing to Internet viewers.

Ironic thing here is that to pull this off, we’ll need those ‘weird’ creative people the Church has been so good at pushing away.

What role do you think the internet should play with the Church? Or Church with the internet?

Photo: Can’t Touch this by Foxtongue

I found his name because Sunday he broke his wrist after a sermon illustration went wrong involving a motorcycle. (sermon video here)

Many reasons propel churches into the spotlight, many not so innocent as Pastor Harlow’s. In the past year there have been multiple occasions where churches and/or pastors have made headlines (most notably Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Trinity UCC in Chicago).

Anyone looking for information on your church will visit your website.

This, along with hoping to attract visitors, should be reason enough to be proactive about the content and design of your website. It is an opportunity to expose many people outside your traditional sphere of influance to your mission and purpose.

The more exposure you get the more likely someone who resonates with your mission/purpose will discover your Church and become a champion of your cause.

The information age is here and we need to be prepare for the expectations placed upon us by those we desire to serve.

Photo Credits: Harley Davidson by ** Maurice **

While looking over some site statistics for clients this week I was reminded of a often forgotten web truth.

Most users spend under 10 seconds at your site.

This means we have only an instant to communicate our message to our end users.

Think of it this way, if you are still reading this post you’ve already invested nearly30 seconds. The first ten seconds you (if average) didn’t get through the first paragraph.

For blogs and long articles these numbers are a bit different. Jakob Nielson put together some information on the subject. This graph is from his site shows how little a user will read of the amount of content you publish.

Notice that no-one read the whole page.

Not much time is it? This is why design is so important. Graphics and Video communicate much more quickly than words do. In the hands of a skilled designer. Their whole job is to strip down your message to the bare essentials and then create a way to communicate that message clearly and graphically.

Ways to Improve your Home Page

• Take away everything that isn’t crutial to your core message
• Give clear cues as to exactly what you want the user to do. (“Come to our church!”)
• Look over your stats to see what your users truly value on your site. Make that very accessible. (google analytics does a great job with this)
• If you have content that should be top priority but isn’t, make it by putting it front and center.
• Give easy access to everything else through your menus and links. Don’t forget to see the first point.