Terribly Poetic

I don’t think I’ve said it here often enough, but I really love my job at Ranger Lake Bible Camp. One of the biggest part of my jobs is being in charge of all things creative. Like a Creative Director. Anyways, as we are gearing up for the summer of 2010 I have been busy lately getting posters, brochures, t-shirts and the like ready for promotion. I am very pleased with this years design and with the theme of Believe. Here is the official desktop wallpaper that shows off the design. It is from this design that all my other designs will take their influence. I decided this year to go with a much more typographic treatment as compared to the heavy graphic components of last years theme. You can download the wallpapers for your desktop and iPhone/Touch below.

As we look to our theme, what is something you believe in?

1024×768 / 1280×800 / 1280×1024 / 1440×900 / 1920×1200 / iPhone/Touch

Some good friends of ours, Darrell and Jessica Braun, are currently in the process of adopting twin girls from Ghana. I am helping where I can with this great event and would love to see you all out on January 9th, 2010. Even if you don’t know them, you can come hear a great band, eat some Steak and bid in the silent auction and know that you are supporting a great cause. Adoption is such a wonderful thing, in fact I believe that more of us need to adopt, but I won’t get into that now. Please check out the facebook page for info. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention, one of my ways of helping was to design this poster. What do you think of it? Would you buy it if the graphic was re-purposed for a t-shirt?

Images and design are not often thought of being combined with faith and values. However, for a Christian to design images and be involved in these types of things without thinking about culture, and what they value and relating it to their faith is a serious error. Design and images are critically related to what our culture values and what we as Christians believe. These things cannot and should not be separated, but in contrast they need to be closely linked and combined. Images and design display what a culture values and what they hold to in tradition. In our modern church image and design display these attributes combined with faith, and sometimes design displays cultural values that do not reflect true faith.

In my study of images and design I want to be able to display my faith as well as my values, making them culturally relevant without displaying values that I do not agree with. I draw most of my philosophy of images from H.R. Rookmaaker, who states that a Christian artist is free to make art that is relevant to our day, through understanding our culture and studying it, however, he continues to say that the Christian artist is not purposelessly free, but he is free to praise God and love his neighbours. As a Christian artist we are to work to create art that has a meaning and a purpose in our culture, one that displays our values, our faith, not “Art for art’s” sake as Rookmaaker puts it.

Images and design display our cultures values and traditions. John Heskett displays this concept by his example of toothpicks. While the Norwegian toothpick represented a value of efficiency through its design, the Japanese toothpick displays a cultural value that was long established through tradition. Therefore, design must be thought of in terms of values, culture, and tradition. As a Christian artist, there is not a real Christian tradition in the arts today, but a Christian artist has to do something that establishes a new tradition, this can only happen if they understand their work and task of understanding their world and all its values. As a Christian then, we must be critical by what we design, are we displaying cultural values and traditions of the world with our faith, which would in turn lessen our faith. Or are we using these values and traditions to heighten the impact of our faith in a positive light. Values, culture, and faith are so connected with design and images that we must be very careful what we design.

As Neil Postman points out, our technology, which is part of our cultural values, affects the design of images, and how culture will understand our values and faith. Just as he talks about the symbol drain so we must remember that this does apply to the design and images that we as a Church are trying to use to communicate its message. As much as the church tries to do everything like popular culture, we must also remember that the culture has a particular value associated with those symbols already, and we need to ask whether that is the value that we want to communicate our faith.

Hey everyone, so I’ve been busy in the last couple days at my new job here at Ranger Lake Bible Camp, and one of my first tasks was to finish up some design work I had begun back in December for the camp. After developing their brochure and poster, I was now ready to create the shirt design for the summer. Typically I like to carry over thematic elements and I am quite pleased with the design. Visit Poetic Industries to see the original poster. However, we are getting different opinions on the use of colour in the shirt and so I turn it over to you, my readers. Please comment on which shirt you like best and if you have any other thoughts, please add those to your vote as well.

[View with PicLens]

I got the chance to do up another poster for a concert coming up at the YFC Building. This time it is a benefit concert to help 3 nursing students travel to India to help in a hospital. While I am not super pleased with the results, it is what came after very short amount of time spent on it. I’d love your comments. I would encourage you all the check out the concert. Here is a link to the facebook event

Just when I thought Poetic Industries was at a stalemate, a few pieces fall together and I am right back to promoting the brand, and trying to raise money for The Watoto Project. About two weeks ago, a friend of mine asked me if I’d be interested in showing my shirts at a concert. She is a fashion designer and would be having her own small booth. Of course I said yes. Then I went to work creating business cards, and making my first set of prints. Creating framed prints of my work may have been the ‘a-ha’ moment that I needed as I had stalled on creating more designs that I didn’t think would ever be printed; until now that is. Printing designs and framing them has given me a whole new lease to start designing some new pieces. I can’t wait.

Then for the icing on the cake. I had visited a number of sites regarding custom skateboard decks before and had always thought of printing some Poetic Decks before, but the costs seemed to be too high. Until I found a more reasonablely priced online company that does just that. Custom Skateboards from your own graphics. Thanks to Deckpeck I can finally get to see a Poetic Industries Skateboard, and I already have a buyer. Thanks Benyamen. Now I can dream up new designs or retool past designs specifically for skateboards. And while I think the skateboard provides a unique canvas, one that as a youth minister, I would display on my wall; Benyamen plans to ride it hard. Here is the first ever Poetic Industries Skateboard.

I came across this portfolio from Abduzeedo and just had to post it here. Joel Grimes knows how to capture a person. His work makes me want to pick my camera back up again. These pictures are beautiful. I encourage you to check out his site as I have just picked a very small sample to wet your appetite.

Yes I am going to talk about hockey in this post. And no, I would never call myself a hockey fan. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I even watched a hockey game. But in an effort to become more utilized in my work here at YFC, I am going to be running a hockey themed club. Let me repeat that for those that are too shocked, me, Daryl Grunau, basketball loving, ultimate frisbee player, who knows next to nothing about hockey, is going to be running and leading a hockey night. There I said it. It is now official. (Okay it was probably official when I created the Facebook Group for the club, but I don’t want to nit pick here)

Starting Jan 29th, at the YFC Building, I will be leading a hockey club, that watches NHL games on big screen, playes XBOX 360 hockey games, Wii Hockey, and a new hockey card game. To prepare I have found myself starting to actually pay attention to NHL highlights, when I normally would ignore them or even turn them off. While doing alot of work for the hockey card game, I looked at TONS of player stats, (at least 300+) and reminised while looking through my hockey card collection from my childhood. Slowly I am starting to put together some knowledge, but it will still take alot of “faken it” to really pull off that I like hockey. I think the ticket for me rests solely in this new card game.

The game was pioneered by some members of Gil Klassen’s family many years ago. With just some alittle tons of work we updated it with new cards, a new scoreboard, and some new twists. While it is hockey themed, one doesn’t have to know a thing about hockey to play and enjoy it; and for the hard core fans, you will have the fun of debating over whether my rankings of the players is accurate or not.

Let me know what you think.

I really love my iPhone, but when I saw this very special phone online, I think the iPhone might be beat. Be sure to explore all the features of the phone and make sure you click on the “I’ve Seen Enough” or the “Release Date” when done exploring.

Here is a sneak peak at the design I created for Ranger Lake’s summer theme: Alive. I’d love to hear what you guys have to say about it. But I won’t apologize for the retro, even 80’s look as we had decided that the theme name of “Alive” already sounded 80s, so I choose not to fight it, but to appeal to it, just in a newer way.