My sister, Ria, and I often send each other comically melodramatic messages when we encounter clients – or people in general – who insist on committing graphic design “sins”.
“Yanggggg…OMG. Someone just asked me to stretch a font horizontally. KMN.”
“Biiiinggggg! My boss just asked me to distribute these flyers that he created…in POWERPOINT.”
“It’s. In. Comic. Sans.”
I’m grateful to have had so many years of graphic design experience (I’ve been using Photoshop since I was 15 years old, and my first job out of college in 2005 was at an ad agency), but I do admit that it’s made me somewhat snooty.
Even now, when designing stuff for the church I work for, I find myself getting annoyed and frustrated at these little things.
The pastor using the wrong font for his slideshow.
Ministry leaders sending out stuff for printing that haven’t been properly laid out.
Being asked to edit a .PSD file that would have been so much easier to lay out in Illustrator.
The printer not following my crop marks perfectly.
I often find myself zeroing in on little imperfections in any work I’ve done. I find it hard to enjoy the finished product at times because all I’m focusing on are the tiny things that went wrong. Then I blame everything around me for the way things turned out, complain and rant about how things could have been better, or kick myself for not getting it right.
Sometime last week my friend Jamie, our new Youth pastor, asked if he could get a copy of Photoshop to create some of the graphics that he needed for his first Youth Group meeting. Unfortunately, we only had licenses for two copies, both of which were already in use. He was disappointed, but said that he’d just have to resort to using…PowerPoint.
“PowerPoint?!” I sneered. I didn’t say anything more, but in my head I was thinking that trying to compose graphics in PowerPoint was akin to trying to style your hair with a fork.
He said he didn’t really have a choice, and just went to work.
On Thursday afternoon, he asked if I could step into his office and take a look at something. I saw this on the screen of his MacBook:
“Nice!” I said.
With a gleeful smile on his face, he asked, “Guess how I did it.”
I thought for a second, then stared in shocked realization. “No! PowerPoint?!”
He nodded.
I was impressed. And not just at the creative ability to make something look as good as this, but at the quiet and determined resolve to do something awesome, regardless of the less than ideal circumstances. Given the same restrictions I would probably just have complained and done a subpar job on purpose.
Isn’t that our problem most of the time, though? We love control. We love when things go exactly as we planned, and can’t handle it when they don’t. We use it as an excuse for our own shortcomings. It hinders us from being grateful about what we do have.
We find ourselves not trusting in God, thinking that we know better than He does…telling Him how everything should have been, how it should be.
But I find that the most amazing things that God does in my life always happen when I surrender everything to Him. When I laid everything at His feet and just said “I don’t understand what’s happening, and I don’t know what to do…but show me,” that’s when the greatest miracles took place, and always in the most unexpected ways.
We don’t always get what we pray for. We don’t always have it easy, or have everything handed to us on a silver platter. We may experience pain, suffering, rejection, and even death…but God’s promises for us are eternal.
God’s forgiven my past, and has my future in His hands. All I can do is choose to live for Him today.
