Relating to Trends
How Should I Relate to Trends? What if I Need Ideas?
Trends are not a bad thing. They are not a good thing. They are just a thing and perhaps a signal. How do you utilize trends but not chase trends? What is your standard? Know who you are. Know what the ministry is and who you’re trying to reach. That’s primary.
You can saturate in trends to learn language, techniques, styles, and perceive/interpret a culture, but do not seek them to be your idea.
I heard a designer once say when you chase trends, “you aren’t looking for ideas, you are looking for shortcuts.” That may not always be the case, but it’s a big temptation. So be honest with yourself in what’s motivating you.
If the trend doesn’t serve the idea or heart of what’s needing to be communicated, it’s not a trend worth chasing no matter how much it resonates with the audience. You can build strength with consistency. You can build openness with variety. Relevance can spark curiosity and approachability. Trends can help in that. Just be mindful not to build an identity in them. Identity can house trends but trends can’t house identity. Remember what the purpose of design is.
So How Do You Get Ideas?
You deepen the pool to draw from. You can invite others to help collaborate. But it’s helpful to begin the process yourself so you might bring more to the table.
1. Empathy
Develop empathy for the target audience & mission. Ideas can flow from just empathizing with them.
2. Prayer
Ideas ultimately come from the Lord. So pray seeking God’s heart on this project and how best to communicate with the target. Pray that your ideas honor Him and His intentions first.
3. Play
Sometimes taking breaks to play can generate ideas. Sometimes just playing around in design or creating something can spark ideas.
4. Observe
Keep your eyes open. Watch the way folks interact and flow through a space. Look at the environment that surrounds them.
5. Brainstorm
Sometimes it’s good to warm up using techniques that work for you...
Forced Connections (ex. trying to relate seemingly opposite things)
Alphabetical Listing (ex. think of things related to the topic that start with the letters of the alphabet)
Mind Map (ex. Draw a circle on a paper or white board with a key word. Then draw an adjoining circle with another word related to the first word. Then draw a circle adjoined to the second word and put a word inside it that relates to the second word. It will web out with words that can spark trains of thought.)
Perspective Shift (ex. Write out an idea. Then look back at that idea from a different perspective. Could be from the point of view from a different player in the mix in how that would add or shift the story).
Play Opposite Thought (ex. Think of an idea and then think in your mind what the opposite would be. Then think of another opposite thought of that idea. It’s a good way to expand categories of thinking.)
Parallels (Think of the problem at hand (or an idea) and consider a quality about it that makes it like another category or industry. Think of crossovers)
Metaphors (Think of different metaphors that help describe the problem to be solved or the nature of the ministry, etc)
6. Experience
Look at your gifts and history, even things that made you weird as a kid. Ideas can spark from there.
7. Archaeology
Find things in the target’s world. They may be physical objects, jokes, prized possessions, knowledge, experiences.
8. Research & EXPLORE
Explore qualities, assumptions, nuances of subject matter, visceral reactions/emotions around the subject.
9. Poetry/LYRICS
Some designers use this to help remind them there are multiple ways to communicate the essence of a message.
Sit with the problem that’s needing to be solved and the needs of the target. Clarify the value of what the ministry is offering them that could connect. As a visual communicator, process how you could use a visual to communicate that message. With an idea, ask yourself, “how can I say it visually?” And ask “how could God enter this idea and speak to them?”
When Looking At Trends, Here Are Some Questions to Ask...
What’s a theme here? Do several trends do the same thing?
Since art/design is language, what might the trend communicate about what that group values?
What makes this trend resonate? How broad an audience does it resonate with?
What is the appetite ratio of newness in trends vs. consistency of the past or familiar visual language in my target audience? (ex. Do they like constant change, constant variety? Or do they have an appetite to keep some consistency with styles they liked years ago?)
Which style/trend would the core of my idea feel most at home in communicating the message that needs to be communicated? How will this trend enhance and not muffle the message?
What trend could we use to help communicate the core of who we are to an audience in a fresh way?
How will I prioritize the design elements utilizing this trend in a way that strengthens the message?
Paul’s Approach
Consider how Paul communicated his message in Acts 17:16-34 that illustrates the heart of things already mentioned.
BURDEN/OBSERVATION
“Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols.”
IMMERSION
“So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there.”
ENGAGEMENT
“Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also conversed with him. And some said, ‘What does this babbler wish to say?’ Others said, ‘He seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities’-because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection.
BUILD CURIOSITY
“And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, ‘May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? For you bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know therefore what these things mean.’”
AWARENESS OF CULTURE
“Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.”
CONNECTION POINT
“So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.”
HIERARCHY, CLARITY, MAKING COMPLEX SIMPLE AND EASY TO FOLLOW, SOURCE
“The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.
EXPAND
“And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for “‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are indeed his offspring.’”
COMMUNICATE VALUE
Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.
CALL TO ACTION
“The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”
ALWAYS MIXED REACTIONS
“Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked. But others said, ‘We will hear you again about this.’ So Paul went out from their midst.”
FOLLOW-UP
‘But some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them.
Paul was able to be relevant. He met people where they were at using some patterns of their day, and he was able to connect it to the heart of his reason for engaging them in a way they could understand. To reiterate, trends & cultural patterns can be a good thing in their right place. But before you jump in to utilizing them, spend time thinking through the target, the heart of the project, and developing core ideas that speak to the needs in them.