"Seeking the Kingdom" graphic

[Gene]

I've actually got a couple days to work on a graphic for a change

This Sunday's sermon is on Matthew 13:31–33, 44–52, "The kingdom of heaven is like...", where Jesus uses a bunch of parables comparing it to a mustard seed, yeast and flour, treasure in the field, etc. The pastor likened it to the Blind Men and an Elephant story, where each gets a very different sense of what an elephant looks like; only if you put all the pieces together do you begin to get some idea of what it actually looks like.

Anyways, any thoughts on the image choice? (it's from stock.xchng, though I significantly darkened the background) Any thoughts on the font choice and text layout? The font is Libel Suit (free at dafont.com), and I chose it in part because the 'e' looks a bit like an elephant. I played around with various 'jungle' and 'adventure' type fonts, but that's not really where the pastor is going with things, so I wanted to keep it simple.

[kbob]

The only comment I might make on the overall image would be going all the way one way or the other for the title image-

either zoom in so far that you're not really sure what you're looking at-and keep it that way until the final pic, which shows a whole elephant

or reverse the process-show the whole elephant first, then the pieces.

Either way would work-right now you're most of the way towards the second of those options...

but that's just me...

Like it overall!

[JLR]

This one might be touchy but it comes from an experience with a horse that was in a slide I once made. The second slide you have of just the elephant's skin has a bit of a crease in the middle of it. You may have some people who will see this and interpret it as the elephants bottom and completely distract them from the message. I would suggest a even tighter zoom where it isn't even as clearly elephants skin they are viewing. I like Kbobs idea of different parts being over zoomed then revealing the elephant at the end. Maybe start the title slide out with the blind men?

JLR

[[Admin] osborn4]

Good choice on the font. The e is great.

I gotta agree with JLR on the second graphic. Could be interpreted as the wrong part of the elephant.

Could you do a muted montage of the leg, tail, trunk, side, etc, to match the story?

Or just pick a different section of elephant and zoom in a bit more.

[Gene]

Well, I could always remove the ambiguity with this image:



The 2nd image will be background for the images the pastor uses to illustrate his sermon, so besides repeating the title, it's mostly a more subtle reinforcement of the title image. It won't appear by itself, but obscured by different photos. In any event, I can see what you're talking about (honestly, I don't know what part of the elephant's skin the image is showing, it's yet another stock.xchng image), so I've done a closer zoom of it.

The montage is a good idea for an illustration in its own right. I'll pass that along to the pastor.

Thanks!

[kbob]

exactly what were you trying to say, Gene?

[Gene]

Originally Posted by kbob

exactly what were you trying to say, Gene?

Hey, I didn't label it (Maaany years ago in high school, my 'Shakespeare and Creative Writing' teacher gave me a hard time because I was the first sophomore to ever take the class normally for juniors and seniors, so when the assignment was to do something like a visual form of onomatopoeia, I drew his name in the shape of an ass's head )

Attached is a collage of elephant images that I sent along with the others to the pastor to use (or not, as he sees fit). The ear is part of a photo I took in Zimbabwe many years ago, and the rest are from stock.xchng.

I also came across this little gem on the Wikipedia page about the story:

There was also a Pogo cartoon by Walt Kelly on this story. Pogo stated that "each of the blind men was partly right". Churchy Lafemme replies, "yeah, but they were all mostly wrong."

Anyways, thanks all for the input. Off the graphics go to the pastor...