10.18Top 5 websites for making free church graphics
I was asked after a recent sermon where I got the graphics from the PowerPoint and sermon handout. Here’s my answer that I emailed to the staff and leaders at Willoughby. Copied below for your convenience.
- www.creativemyk.com – some of the gear on here is a little bit cheesy, but there’s plenty of good stuff. I just subscribe to it via RSS (What the heck is rss?) and anytime I see a good one, I download and store in folder on my computer.
- www.sxc.hu – good range of free stock photos – they are also royalty free – so if you publish a book – you can use their pics without giving royalties. They’ve also got a good paid service – but I think there’s enough good stuff you don’t need to pay coin
- www.simplyyouthministry.com – there are some very very very cool backgrounds on here. Download all their folders, unzip them – and then put them into one gallery on your hard drive for quick viewing. The newer ones are better than the older ones (ie – the ones from 2002 are increasingly uncool design!!)
- www.stufficanuse.com – these guys have some fully pimped gear. You can download photoshop files etc.
- www.dafont.com – there are lots of really bad font sites online – and plenty that have annoying pop-ups. This site has some good gear and no pop-ups. I typically won’t download the ones that are “free for personal use only” – ie I’ll get the ones that the licence allows using on church material without having to buy the font.
- www.irfanview.com – yeah I know this makes 6, but this isn’t strictly somewhere to download gear. I have some sweet design software (adobe creative suite) – but often for something quick – I’ll just use PowerPoint. Put some fonts on your background – copy all – and then paste it into irfanview – you can easily crop and then save as JPEG (or any other number of file names).
Hope this is useful!
Good links. I regularly use #1, #2 and #5. I’ll have to check out the others…
October 19th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
CJ you got any other sites you use?
October 19th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
Not really to be honest. For fonts it’s pretty much always daFont (such a good range, and really easy to search through when you’re after a particular type of font). For images I like the diversity that CreativeMYK has. Whilst there’s quite a bit that I’d never touch, there’s a fair amount of good stuff, and even a reasonable number that provide the .psd file. Either that or pics that I’ve taken myself.
Oh and yay me. This is comment #7000!
October 19th, 2009 at 9:25 pm
hey here’s another site: http://www.pixelgirlpresents.com – not sure on legality for usage.
hey cj – i see where you got it from, but i’m not sure how that 7000 is calculated… according to my blog backend you are 4,198 – so congrats on taking that auspicious title!!!
October 19th, 2009 at 11:08 pm
Make sure you check out our website at:
http://www.awakeimages.com
We have one volume of 399 images (133 triptych images, to be precise) available for free. If you have any questions, let me know ( paul at awakeimages dot com ) and I will help you out.
Paul
October 20th, 2009 at 6:42 am
Thanks for the link Paul. Looks like there’s some great stuff (even in the free volume). I’m downloading volume 1 right now!
October 20th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
hey bro
Looking to get some Student-discounted Creative Suite gear… any recommendations?
What do you do the bulk of your work in?
I’ve never used anything like Illustrator… pretty much I’ve used Photoshop-type applications all my life. At the moment I use the GIMP, which is functional but pretty frustrating.
I could get Photoshop CS4 Extended V11 for $195. But for $200 more, I could also get InDesign, Illustrator, Flash Professional, Dreamweaver, and Fireworks.
Any single one of those would cost more than $200 alone, so I guess the question is… do I just get Photoshop or do I spring for the Suite?
What do you think?
October 22nd, 2009 at 9:23 pm
yo man – sorry for slow reply.
What do you do the bulk of your work in?
surprisingly, i use PowerPoint, Publisher and Irfanview for quick things.
regarding which adobe gear i use.
i’ll use photoshop to play with photos.
but if i’m making a postcard – i’ll normally use InDesign.
i’ve also used Illustrator for some logos.
i’ve also had a bit of a play with flash – one day when i have a spare day (unlikely) i’d love to learn it.
soooo… photoshop is essential – but if you can afford it – get the lot. i probably even use indesign more than PS?
i reckon that the amount of gear you get in the student pack for $400 is worth the cash.
is that helpful?
October 28th, 2009 at 5:06 am
Extremely
Thanks bro!
October 28th, 2009 at 8:11 am
[...] October 09 #1 post: Top 5 websites for making free church graphics [...]
November 2nd, 2009 at 6:19 pm
Thanks for the sharing. We were looking for this!
November 8th, 2009 at 3:44 am
Wow great websites. I am working on my Church CMS website and it will help me to improve my skills. Thanks
February 16th, 2010 at 9:53 pm
Hey really inspirational design indeed. I really appreciate the originality of designs in real creativity. I am also working on my new logo project. Thanks for sharing it will surely help me alot.
February 23rd, 2010 at 7:35 pm
Hey really inspirational design indeed. I really appreciate the originality of designs in real creativity.
February 23rd, 2010 at 7:36 pm