Thanks for the honor, Inspiredology.

My team leader mentioned yesterday that the fun has not been in his work recently. I feel the same way. I want to design or craft a Web page. But too many other details or meetings have taken my time.

These are all important things but design and crafting is what my heart longs to do. I want to have time to play around and try new things. That is how God has made me. I look forward to a new season when I can experience this again.

“Come back to me.” Line from The Two Towers movie that expresses my longing.

I am currently working on a new design for Campus Crusade’s Summer Mission Projects site. It is an exciting project because it is the first to be a total package. Our team is working on the promotional videos, print brochure, sticker and Web site. The video has been the lead player in determining the common design thread that will weave through all the pieces in the package.

For the Web site, I am using “real-life” elements of a desk and it’s contents and combining it with illustrations that create a fantasy world within the video.

As I have progressed with the design, the headings typography was begging to be a scripted style that fit into the theme of a sketchbook on a desk. Now I was faced with the problem of how to create those headings in a scripted font. I decided to use image replacement for navigational elements. But as I thought about it, sIFR seemed to be a good solution for the content headings instead of image replacement.

I have never used sIFR before and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to give it a try. I found a tutorial, This is How I Got sIFR to Work. The author’s intent was to distill the “official” documentation into a simplier form. I give him kudos on accomplishing that intention.

I was very excited tonight when I finally got it to work. I had been working with it for a couple of hours last week but never had success. Now I am not always the best at following instructions so tonight, I decided to go back and go through each step. (I never follow the owner’s manual of a new electronic toy. I would rather play with it and figure it out myself.)

One of the first things I found was the swf file I created last week did not work correctly so I went back and created one according to the tutorial. Also the first time I was working through the tutorial, I did not download the latest sIFR from the place the author suggested. So as I had worked through his tutorial, several things were not matching up. That had really been frustrating. It was so much easier to have the right version and be seeing the same things the tutorial was describing.

I am so glad I stuck with learning. I think this is an appropriate and smart solution. I will not have to create images for every heading and it was also cut the download time.

In North Carolina, a pastor’s wife emailed Campus Crusade’s staff wanting to start a ministry at Richmond Community College. By the time the staff met with her, the pastor’s wife had already established Campus Crusade as a recognized group on her campus, had 3 student officers, a faculty sponsor and a church partnership. As students stood in line at the campus bookstore to buy their books for the semester, the pastor’s wife was giving away flyers directing students to visit everystudent.com, an evangelistic Web site of Campus Crusade. There was also information on the flyer about a kickoff event that the ministry was having the next week.

When the Campus Crusade staff showed up at Richmond Community College to offer some coaching, the pastor’s wife had put together an outreach with a live band, 600 slices of pizza and an iPod that had been donated by the church partnership. To enter to win the iPod, students were asked to fill out a “30 second survey” that was downloaded from GodSquad. The survey generated over 100 contacts of people interested in small group Bible studies or knowing God personally. Over 60 students heard the gospel during the concert. GodSquad played a central role in helping to equip this pastor’s wife to begin the Campus Crusade ministry at Richmond Community College.

A couple of weeks ago, I heard Richard Rutter of Clearleft speak to the subject of Web typography on the Boagworld podcast. Richard has put together some thoughts on webtypography.net. I was poking around today on that site and came across these thoughts related to using ems instead of pixels in defining the size of type on a Web page.

“… the beauty and advantage of the Web as medium is that readers are able to adjust their reading environment to suit their own needs. This is a concept that should be acknowledged & embraced, and built into website designs from the ground up.”

I have to admit, I have been reluctant to embrace using ems instead of pixels. Part of it is that I have not really understood ems. I have been hesitant because I have to relinquish control as a designer. But I think what Richard says here makes good sense. The Web is a medium where readers can adjust their reading environment. This should be recognized and embraced. It is part of the medium.

I had already been thinking about this after picking up Steve Krug’s second edition of Don’t Make Me Think. I was reading about accessibility and he also addressed the issue of resizable type. He talked about the fact that designers fear a compromised design when they hear “accessibility.” I think that has been my fear in using ems and giving up control. It becomes more of an issue when using text in “navigation bars” when increasing text size can break the design. I am motivated to read Dan Cederholm’s chapter about this in Bulletproof Web Design.

I am going to be interviewing students at the conference to help me guide me in future improvements to GodSquad.com. I am taking the first steps toward creating user personas.
I first read about personas in Kelly Goto’s Web Redesign 2.0 and have heard lots of good things about them from Jared Spool. I believe creating personas will help me to better design and develop sites that equip students to reach their campus.

Steve Moudler’s book, The User is Always Right has been helpful in preparing me to ask the right questions to get the information that I want and need. It is the first really practical resource that I have found that guides you through the process of creating useable personas.

I am looking forward renewing relationships with Campus Crusade for Christ staff that we served with in this region of the country when we were field staff at Kansas State.

This summer I took a theology class with Dr. Bruce Ware of Southern Seminary. One of the lectures focused on the Holy Spirit. Dr. Ware pointed out that the Holy Spirit was given temporarily in the Old Testament and that there was some functional reason to empower them, a task to accomplish.

There were only four groups that Scripture records as the Holy Spirit empowering in the Old Testament:

1. Civil leaders — Moses, leaders that Moses shared the load with (Numbers 11:10–17, 24–29) Saul and David are examples
2. Judges
3. Prophets
4. A craftsmen — Exodus 31:3 explains that the Holy Spirit empowered Bezalel to do works of art and craftsmanship for the tabernacle

I found it really interesting that one the four categories was for creative endeavors. One of the greatest challenges I find is involving God through the entire creative process, through prayer and constant conversation. I want to involve God through the entire process. I don’t want my skills and competencies to ever cause me to forget Who endowed me with them and it is His grace that empowers me.

I love the moments where the creative flow is going and I think of a quote from Eric Liddell. He said that when he ran, he felt God’s pleasure. He was doing what God gifted him to do. I have moments when I feel the pleasure of God when I create. And there are moments when it is so obvious that it is the Holy Spirit working in me to solve a creative problem or have an idea.

The color scheme comes Natalie Jost’s PantoneFall06 scheme from ColorSchemer. It was inspired from Pantone’s Fall Color report. I have not used much neutral colors in my designs so I thought I would branch out a bit.

The photo is of Thorncrown Chapel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. It is one of my favorite pieces of architecture. It is a thing of beauty and a awesome sacred space. I love the cathredrals of Europe and Thorncrown captures the feel in a smaller scale.

I have been working on this design off and on since July. I finally worked out some of the bugs with CSS and launched it this morning. I still have some ideas I want to explore but now I have a working starting point. A big reason I have this website/blog is to explore and play around.

Today, I decided to try again using a different CSS strategy. I decided to try to do some absolute positioning to solve some of the problems I was having with my first try. IE6 was giving too much margin or padding to the design and was messing up the curve on the navigational elements. As I tried the absolute positioning today, I was able to solve that problem. I have one other problem of difference in rendering in browsers that I need to solve but I am optimistic. I had “thrown in the towel” but now I am picking it up and giving it another try.

CollegeWalk is a site that I would like to develop further but I have run into some problems getting that done. There is functionality behind the site that allows students to register and ask that one or more of the college minstries contact them. There are other collegiate ministries that we would like to add but getting the programming done in house has been a challenge. At times I wish I knew more programming so I could make more of my dreams a reality.

Another interesting note, the site was down for a couple of days around the time that it was publicized on Breakpoint. Yikes, missed a huge opportunity there.

Much as the Student Volunteer Movement launched a wave of college students to the world as missionaries, Campus Crusade is trusting God for a new outpouring at CM2007.

We believe God will use CM2007 to raise up a new generation of student and staff Leaders who will walk surrendered and intimate lives with Christ, be equipped and motivated as movement builders and commit to taking the gospel to the students and campuses of their nations and the world.

It is one of the most fun designs that I have ever created. I was inspired by the logo that was created by a Korean firm. One of the features of the website is video. There is a video that captures the spirit behind the conference and vignettes from Campus Crusade leaders from around the world.

I think I tend to forget how much time I spend working out the CSS each time I have done a design in it. I have done 4 different sites in XHTML/CSS and two of the sites I have done a second design so I have done a total of 6 designs that are tableless. I really like using CSS but it does add a lot more hassle at times because browsers render it differently. I hope IE7 does a better job and makes life a little bit easier as far as designing for it.

I did play with the design some more on Saturday and changed the background to the orange color instead of the blue that is in the banner at the top. I think I like this them better. I have made each separate design of the site into it’s own WordPress theme so I could change back to a previous design very easily.

To be honest, I am having some trouble in determining what to tell you. I feel like the part of GodSquad that helps new students to consider starting a ministry on their campus is the weakest part of the site. I have redone it several times and I am still not that happy with it. It does communicate our vision and how they can be a part of it. I think it is more of a God thing then what we are doing with the site. I think the rest of the site and the valuable resources are probably a selling point.

I have been considering looking at sites like Weight Watchers and others to see what kind of “preview” they give to those considering “joining”. I would love to have some video at some point showing students who have started a ministry. Another idea I have to start is just have some testimonials with pictures and text so that new people could identify with. Here is a recent article that got me thinking more about it.

I wish I could be of more help. To be honest, I am amazed that I get as many contacts through the site as I do because I think it could be a whole lot better. Maybe the fact that we do a fairly good job of laying out the process that reassures them. Again, I think it is mostly a God thing.

I may be short changing myself. I have put thought into how to cast vision for new students and volunteers to start ministries. But I have never been very happy with the solutions I have come up with. I would much rather have images and video that can help create a more emotional connection which is what you want to do in vision casting. I had started learning Flash a couple of years ago for that very reason. I would like to get some video of a successful launch so that potential leaders could “see it” in action.

Several weeks ago, I had proposed creating an Internet Operations Team because the Campus Ministry has never had a team of “webmasters” to take care and evolve our key assets. For years, I have been the only full-time webmaster in the National Office.

I think my new role was made with my proposal in mind. What it will look like, I still don’t know. Just another opportunity to walk by faith. This change is only the first of what will be many in the National Campus Office.

I have put together some resources on GodSquad.com on this topic and developed Into the Wardrobe, which I mentioned yesterday. I am a bit nervous about representing Campus Crusade. I am grateful for the opportunity to share about something I have been thinking about.

The interview is going to be taped today at 1:30 EST.

Into the Wardrobe uses Life@Large to share the gospel. I used images from the movie and tied images and quotes from Lewis to the different themes shared in the Life@Large presentation. I am really pleased with how it turned out.

• What happens at death?
• What determines a person’s experience of either heaven or hell?
• An ABC News Special seeks to answer two questions. “Where is heaven?” and “How do we get there?” Would you be interested in hearing how the Bible answers those two questions?

I want to work on the last question. These were my first ideas.

I found several helpful resources at narniaresources.com. I highlighted several ideas that I thought our student leaders would find helpful. I also had the chance to look through some resources that our Campus Crusade staff in Eastern Europe put together. They gave me permission to use the content in a tract they put together and I was able to get permission from narniaresources.com to use several images from the movie. I am looking forward to putting that together this week.