Background

​The goal of this project is to design posters for Coquitlam Mandarin Church's Sunday sermon activities based on the topic chosen by the preacher. The topic of the sermon will be built around a quote chosen from the Bible, and the posters are expected to reflect the topic. The audiences are mainly Christians in the Coquitlam Mandarin Church, however, Christians from other churches or outsiders who are interested in Christianity could also be included.

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​Specific Case Study: Poster for the "New Year's Bless" Sermon

Figure 1, poster for the "New Year's Bless" Sermon

The goal of this poster is to represent the sermon on February 14th, 2021, which is 1 day after the lunar new year. The theme quote of the sermon is shown below:

But the land you are crossing the Jordan to take possession of is a land of mountains and valleys that drinks rain from heaven. It is a land the Lord your God cares for; the eyes of the Lord your God are continually on it from the beginning of the year to its end. ---Deuteronomy 11:11-12,

Such theme quote, plus the title and timing of the poster, suggests that the topic of the sermon includes celebrating the lunar new year while acknowledging God's love towards His people and express goodwill towards the future. 

Results

The preacher happily accepted the design and the design received high feedbacks

Design Considerations:

Since the sermon is related to celebrations for the new year and hopes for the future, a warm colour palette with purple as the dominant colour is chosen. Although red is generally more related to the lunar new year, it was not used as the dominant colour in this case because red could represent devils in Christianity.

The theme quote is visualized in a way that incorporates elements of the lunar new year, where the angel at the top holds several sets of sparkling fireworks, and the sparks of the firework become the rain. The firework and the rain stands for the vitality of spring and celebration for the lunar new year, and the angel connects such joyous sights to God's kindness.

Alternative Solution Explorations

Finding a visualization for such a concept is somewhat challenging since "bless from God" and "hope towards future" are all vague ideas. To figure out a visualization for such a concept, I decided to base my visualization on the rather descriptive quote given by the preacher, and explored a variety of visualization methods.

Alternative Solution 1

Figure 2, rough draft for alternative solution 1
Figure 3, coloured draft for alternative solution 1

The solution shown in figure 2 and 3 uses a growing seedling against mountains to reflect the topic, where the seedling represents hope and a fresh start and the mountains in the background references the theme quote. Light and cool colours are used to convey a peaceful mood where God's promises make people feel peaceful and settled. This solution is not chosen because the mood does not reflect the spirit of the new year celebration in my opinion.

Alternative Solution 2

Figure 4, coloured draft for alternative solution 2

The solution shown in figure 4 applied the same design approach as the final design solution. However, this solution is not used because the composition does not reflect God's presence clearly. To solve such issue, the final solution enlarged the angel to emphasis God's presence.

Final Thoughts

Dealing with cultural expectations from both the Christian side and the Chinese culture side is perhaps one of the most challenging parts of the project, where cool colours do not meet the joyful atmosphere of the lunar new year and warm colours have the risk of representing devils(since red is generally related to such a concept). Finding a good representation for the topic is yet another challenge since "blessing" and "goodwill" are all rather abstract concepts.

Overcoming such challenges with the approaches mentioned above certainly provides me with valuable practical experiences. Many have learnt that the combination of elements can represent concepts, the use of colour could have dangerous cultural meanings, and so on. But these suggestions mean nothing until they are carried out in practice in front of specific cases.

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