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Type of Piece – Will the piece be a flyer, bulletin insert, poster, program, postcard, newspaper advertisement, or something else? You must know the piece's purpose before you design it.

3 Ibid., 17.

*The author expresses appreciation to Sharon Bourbeau and Randy Morrison, Oklahoma Baptist University Public Relations Office for assistance with the outline and content of this section. The information is drawn from presentations that they made to my church music classes, 1997–2000.

Determine the Audience – Who is your target audience? A piece designed for use inside the church will utilize different standards than one designed to communicate to the community. Determining the audience will also influence the artist's design.

The Design

Communicate with the Artist – Let the artist know the intended audience, the scope of the piece, the budget, color preferences, and ideas about layout. The more you can communicate to the artist, the more you'll be pleased when the design is completed. Search through magazines, books, posters, and CD covers to find ideas that may capture your intentions. Communicate these ideas to the artist.

In-house design – If you are designing the piece yourself, get the best resources possible — clip art, computer graphics, and appropriate software packages.

Basic Rules of Design

Keep it Simple – Just because multiple graphics and templates are available, you shouldn't necessarily use them. Use white space effectively.

Choose Fonts Carefully – Generally, you should only use two fonts per piece. You should use one for the headlines and another for the body. If you have large portions of text, you should use a font with a serif (e.g. Times Roman) rather than san serif font (e.g. Helvetica, Arial). A serif is "a fine line projecting from a main stroke of a letter, especially one of the fine cross-strokes at the top or the bottom."1 For example, the extensions of the following letter are serifs: T. Fonts with serifs are easier to read for long passages. You may use variations such as bold and italic, but try to keep them in the same family. You should avoid underlining. Use italics, bold, or small capital letters for emphasis. Script fonts should never be used in all capital letters because they are impossible to read.

Readability – When using backgrounds or pictures as backgrounds, be sure that the text is readable.