Bulletins are Dead

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I worked as my parish secretary for a number of years and somehow didn't get fired. I was good at greeting individuals who came in, and could strike up a small conversation with anyone who was waiting to speak to Father. I answered questions to the best of my ability and made sure that the front desk was always kept presentable. All this to say I still wasn't really "secretary" material.

I was also in charge of creating our weekly bulletin, which is where my degree in graphic design came in handy. When I was given the original file, it was in Publisher—I knew I wasn't going to be doing that for long, but that's just preference—and to say it was a mess was a bit of an understatement. Textboxes were out of place, clipart were sprawled across and around the layout, and information was a chore to find. It was utter chaos, but the worst part about it is it looked exactly like any other Sunday bulletin: scrambled.

Now I don't actually think parishes should get rid of bulletins because of our access to social media and the text messaging softwares out there. Quite the contrary! We should still provide our parishioners on a regular basis with printed content about upcoming ministries, weekly reflections from Father, and who should contact who about a sacramental record they need. It's actually very good to include printed versions of information to reach EVERYONE in the pews: Old and young, tech savvy or not, visitors and weekly attendees. They just need a little revival.

What we need to realize is bulletins—or any printed materials for your organization—don't have to look like the scrambled last-minute ditch effort, and can be most beneficial when done successfully. Here are three simple ways you can improve your bulletin—or printed materials in general:

1. Pay attention to layout

Most softwares used to design anything include a pre-made grid layout that you can activate and easily help you figure out how your pages can be organized. All you have to do is know what will make a seamless layout and what you need to search for—columns and margins.

Columns are the vertical spaces that stretch from top to bottom, acting as containers for information. Margins create "breathing" space around the columns. Keeping information inside columns on a page will present clear information to the viewer, and the margins give a visual break, or breathing space around those columns. These are fantastic tools that won't be printed out, and is one sure way to go from an OK design to an outstanding one!

Think about a garden. To keep track of what is where, you set up a "guide" to make sure nothing is squashed together or overlapping, there is space to step around, you weed out what isn't needed or wanted, and the produce is organized in columns—or rather rows in this instance. The same can be applied to your design!

Usually a document stacked with information is best laid out in two to three columns, and once you have these parameters set you can easily piece together the information. You can even take a step further and stretch pieces of information across multiple columns, but don't forget to use the margins to keep sections separated!

2. What needs to be included, and what can wait

When content is printed weekly, it limits what should be included in each edition. But does it really? What if you have so many good ministries and events happening all at once? How do you narrow down what makes it into the bulletin or onto flier? You can start by asking the right questions: Is it an event or ministry happening between now and next week? Is it a one-time event, or will it repeat and be better used later when there is more space? Will the ministry need promoted months in advance?

It's easy to present an overload of information to the viewer. When planning necessary content, the above questions are important. It's also important to decide what needs to be printed consistently—ie. contact information, Mass times, website. What you present to parishioners or your specific audience should be informational AND relevant.

3. Balance text vs. visuals

Some individuals are better at reading and immediately absorbing the content, while others—myself included—are dependent on visuals for relaying information. Knowing the eyes also need a break from text is crucial to making successful, printed content. Experiment with a mixture of graphics in your next bulletin, and I challenge you to take it a step further and avoid going straight to the clipart library. You don't need them! Try searching for pre-made Christian-themed high-quality graphics from websites like Canva, WeCreate, or Cathopic. Sprinkle in a personalized photo taken at your picnic or fundraiser evening. Yes, you can even use a colored text box here and there!

There's still other ways to break up information on a page. Play around with the hierarchy of titles and their descriptions. Bold your title, increase the font size by 5. Try a legibly different font. Hierarchy is a way of visually breaking up text without using a single image! Communicate to the viewer visually a new topic has begun without using that color box.

Putting each of these suggestions into practice won't be flawlessly nailed in one week, even the first bulletin I redesigned was drastically different than the last one. It should be a process if you've never done something like this before. What is most important is that you love your audience enough to engage them throughout their ENTIRE experience at your parish or organization. One simple way to do that is make them desire to keep whatever materials you give them because it's too beautiful to throw away!

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