www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Electronic Sunday Bulletin Covers

Eastern Christian Bulletin Service now distributes Sunday bulletin covers to 300+ Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic parishes in the US and Canada by hardcopy. These are legal-size sheets with color icons and text commentary according to the liturgical calendar for both Gregorian and Mixed Julian Pascha dates. Samples can be seen at www.ecbulletin.com. [ecbulletin.com.]

With the advancements in electronic design and printing technology, both in more access and lower cost, it seems local parishes are making more of their own Sunday bulletins.

I would like to ask members of the Forum is you think there is a need for making our bulletin cover designs available electronically in some fashion, probably some sort of a website download. If so, what size or sizes would be most popular? Should we offer both calendars? Should we also offer a strictly Julian calendar version?

Any comments or feedback would be welcome. Thanks!
Jack

Very nice work.

From the vantage point of a Lutheran who produces his own parish bulletin covers:

1) Have the iconography available by itself, as well as bundled with the other text.

2) Have the iconography in a common graphics format such as .jpg or .gif for easy rescaling to fit unique formats. Mine, for example, is roughly 6 L x 4 1/4 W.

3) Be sure to choose icons that will reproduce well on black-only copiers.

4) And keep the cost reasonable--free is best for small parishes (keeping in mind that we are burning our own printer toner, copier toner, and supplying our own paper).

Thomas, thanks for your comments.

1 and 2) If we distribute a PDF, then both Photoshop and InDesign (or other desktop design software) can import or convert the icon and text commentary to whatever you need to resize and re-shape.

3) to print a color icon on a B&W printer, the best approach is to convert and adjust the brightness/contrast with Photoshop to suit your own preferences. We could offer an already converted B&W version, but would involve a lot moire work on our part.

4) yes, free would certainly be best, but wouldn't cover the time, effort and cost to make these available. Do you think $2.50 per week ($10/month) would be too much to ask?

Jack

Seems a bit high, given that the various clip art books that I use were in the $15-20 range and cover 52 Sundays plus major Festivals.

At $120.00/yr I could get half a dozen more books.

But then don't you have to spend the time scanning the clipart? And is the clipart in color?
And what about the value of the commentary that comes with each Sunday's icon and/or feastday?
Are me and my small staff supposed to work for free, not to mention the cost of running an ecommerce website?

Jack

Your title made me think of another use for electricity. Attach a small electric charge to pews to keep people from sitting in them. We might actually bring our liturgy back that way.

I've done some more research for online resources, and they seem to range from free (black and white clipart), to lots generic color images without commentary or any sort (about $3-6 per image), to an annual subscription for access to electronic templates from $120-150 per year. So it seems $10/month is in the ballpark.

I couldn't find any with iconographic images or commentary. Does anyone know of anything available?

But since there's been so little comment for this thread on this forum, maybe there's no interest at all anyway, and we shouldn't bother!

Jack

If you decide to go ahead with the electronic offering, would you continue to offer the conventional option as well for those parishes that prefer it??

YES, of course. We have more than 300 parishes, both Catholic and Orthodox now, that I would not want to lose!

But more and more of our existing customers seem to be switching to doing theirs "in house" with the new technology, and so I'm trying to offer an additional product line that will meet their needs, and maybe expand into other new customers (especially Roman Catholics and Protestants).

If other parishes who prefer printed, ready-to-use bulletins, would have other requests (like other sizes?), I would also welcome that input.

Jack

Well, I've decided to take the plunge and see what happens. Even though there has been little response to this thread, there HAVE been nearly 500 views, so there must be some kind of interest in this idea.

Therefore, Eastern Christian Bulletin Service (ECBS) is now offering an Electronic Sunday Bulletin product line to compliment our printed version. We have added an online Catalog to our bulletin website: www.ecbulletin.com [ecbulletin.com] where you can buy and download PDF files in three ready-to-print formats: Leter, Legal and Tabloid. Downloads will be available monthly with four (or five) Sundays in each download file, for just $10 per month or $2.50 per week. You can print as many copies as you need for your parish, but we ask that you not re-distribute or otherwise copy the PDF file -- we have not put any security on the artwork to make it easier to use.

We will offer four different versions/calendars with appropriate icons for the Feasts, Scripture readings, or Saints for each Sunday, each month and each year, according to the following calendars:

Byzantine Catholic -- the Byzantine Catholic liturgical calendar with the Gregorian date for Easter
Eastern Orthodox -- the Orthodox liturgical calendar of Gregorian dates for fixed feasts, and the Julian date for Easter
Roman Catholic -- the Roman Catholic lexicon for readings, feast days and saints
Protestant -- the Revised Common Lectionary for most Protestant Churches (United Methodist, Evangelical Lutheran, Presbyterian, Episcopal, etc.)

Based on my research to date, I believe we offer a superior product in the following ways:

-- unique and custom design for each Sunday, each month -- not stock artwork
-- three different sizes of PDF formats ready to print
-- an icon for each Sunday along with a text commentary for catechetical enrichment
-- economical method for small parishes to design and print their own color bulletins
-- simple website payment and download each month

The August 2012 images are now available, and September will be posted in the next week or two. I plan to have two months always available (the current month and the next month), rotating through the calendar year.

If anyone has any feedback or comments on this product line, please let me know. Otherwise please pass this information on to anyone involved in producing your parish Sunday bulletins.

Just go to www.ecbulletin.com [ecbulletin.com] and click on CATALOG. Other samples and an order form for our printed version are also available on the website. In the future, we are planning other electronic and printed versions for Feasts, Saints, and the upcoming "Year of Faith."

THANKS!
Jack