Sacrament meeting program designs

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lajackson
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Re: Sacrament meeting program designs

#11

Post by lajackson »

Interesting reminder about silencing phones. If I put that on a program, I am not sure I would limit the request to just during the sacrament. [grin]
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sbradshaw
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Re: Sacrament meeting program designs

#12

Post by sbradshaw »

I think people would skip over and not notice it if you put it in at the top. In the middle of the program it makes people think about it a little more. :) It also does help emphasize that the reason the meeting is so important is because of the sacrament.
Samuel Bradshaw • If you desire to serve God, you are called to the work.
Panowest
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Re: Sacrament meeting program designs

#13

Post by Panowest »

Nice design on the sacrament meeting program. I've seen these as a tri-fold also but that made the type smaller and there was a lot of info crammed onto it.

One thing I had to deal when I used to live in N. Utah was a bishop that did not allow members phone numbers to be printed on the programs. I think he was worried that personal information was going to leak out into public hands (stalkers or bombers maybe?). For that same reason, he would not allow printed ward directories fearing member anonymity.
I assume this is up to the discretion of each bishopric, but is it a valid concern to consider overall?

BTW: If you needed a number, he wanted you to go online to get it, problem was not everyone had internet, let alone a computer.
Just my 2 cents. :geek:
lmcguire
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Re: Sacrament meeting program designs

#14

Post by lmcguire »

photoray wrote:I assume this is up to the discretion of each bishopric, but is it a valid concern to consider overall?
IMO, it may be valid for a small percentage of individuals who actually are under some direct threat. If I were one of those people, I would discuss confidentiality / privacy at the time I accepted a calling that would otherwise put my name and/or contact information on printed material. (Of course, if the threat knows where you go to church (so they can show up and get the printed material), I'm not sure keeping your contact information off the program or out of the newsletter is going to do you any good.)

However, for the vast majority of us, whenever I hear about people trying to keep their contact information from members of their own ward, my thoughts run along these lines:

https://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/mos ... lang=eng#7
https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testa ... ang=eng#45
https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testa ... ang=eng#80

...and whatever other record-keeping and helping-each-other scriptures you care to add. In the modern world, hiding our contact information from each other is contrary to the covenant to help each other.

FWIW,

Liz
wiscombe.peter
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Re: Sacrament meeting program designs

#15

Post by wiscombe.peter »

I have been working with our Ward Bulletin Specialists for a while now on various bulletin templates. We created for them the attached Microsoft Word document that is a fairly simple template to use.

In addition to the paper program that is printed each week, we have been emailing a PDF version of the bulletin on Saturday evening for anyone who wants to have it on their phone/tablet. This has cut down on the number of paper programs we have to print each week -by about half - as well as being convenient for the ward members.

However, this creates a couple of challenges:
  1. The paper program needs to be a folded paper booklet - two pages per sheet - where the PDF works best as single pages
  2. There is not an easy way to convert from one to the other.
  3. The dimensions of a tablet are not proportional to a half-sheet of paper
  4. The skillset required to do the PDF conversion has been beyond the ability of our ward bulletin specialists. They are able to handle entering the updated information into a Word document, but that is about it.
What we have been doing for the past couple of years is having the ward bulletin specialist email me a copy of the finished word document so I can convert it to PDF. I then have to Print to PDF the pages in this order: Front, Back, Back, Front, then use a PDF editor (I just use Preview on my Mac) to crop the appropriate left/right sides, and then again print to PDF - using the A5 paper size. A5 seems to match fairly closely to most tablets/phones (see attached sample)

I have been attempting lately to reverse the process: have a 4 page template that can then be printed out two sheets per page so it becomes the booklet. My efforts at this have been focused on using Google Docs for the template as it would allow for better collaboration as well as defaulting to a PDF format

Some limitations of using Google Docs are:
  1. I am having an issue when I save as PDF that it inserts an extra blank page after each page. I can remove them easily with Preview or a PDF editor
  2. After downloading the PDF, I have to resequence my pages in the PDF editor 4,1,2,3 to do a proper booklet print
  3. No dot-leaders - That’s just a preference thing for me.
I have shared out my Google-Docs template. Anyone can view it, but you have to log on with a Google account to be able to copy it to your own Google Documents
Sacrament Meeting Program Template
Attachments
Sacrament Meeting Program - TabletPDF.pdf
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Sacrament Meeting Program Template.docx
(136.79 KiB) Downloaded 3510 times
lmcguire
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Re: Sacrament meeting program designs

#16

Post by lmcguire »

Not sure if you've already considered this, but couldn't you design the MS Word doc to have 4 pages, each 5.5 x 8.5, with blanks for the specialist to fill out? Then the "conversion" to PDF is as simple as printing, and printing to paper is as simple as printing 2 pages per sheet - MS Word print settings makes it pretty easy to do that.

FWIW,

Liz
wiscombe.peter
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Re: Sacrament meeting program designs

#17

Post by wiscombe.peter »

Yes, I had tried doing that - it is essentially what I am doing with the google doc. Unfortunately, the bulletin people have never been able to figure out the 2 page per sheet printing. I walked them through it, but it never worked for them once i left them alone. :(
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sbradshaw
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Re: Sacrament meeting program designs

#18

Post by sbradshaw »

I wish Google Docs allowed leader dots. I've experimented some with HTML/CSS for programs – different CSS styles switch around the order of the pages if you are printing (at least in Chrome). You could also have different CSS for displaying it in a digital format.
http://bradshawfamily.net/~samuel/zzz/meeting2/
For it to really be practical, you'd want a back-end database, user accounts, and various templates to choose from. And you can't store membership data in the cloud, so phone numbers are out and some of the other information might be a grey area, too. As it is, you can edit the fields, but you can't save your changes, and you can't change the number of talks, etc.
Samuel Bradshaw • If you desire to serve God, you are called to the work.
tbuhler94
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Re: Sacrament meeting program designs

#19

Post by tbuhler94 »

Hello, I am a the designer of our singles ward programs every week. I just wanted to add my own template to those shown on here, so anyone new to this calling and searching the web can find another template they might like. I will upload a PDF and Microsoft Word file version. Other file versions for Wordperfect available.

I hope this simple and clean template can be of use to you!

Br. Tom Buhler

Q's or want a different file format? E-mail the listed e-mail on my flyer with subject 'LDS Sunday Program' please :)
P.S. If you want a free word search maker for something for the kids to do, or primary lessons, I can get you an Excel based word-search maker I programmed, e-mail me with the same subject as listed previously.
Attachments
0_FlyerTemplate.docx
Original - TomBuhler2016
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0_FlyerTemplate.pdf
Original - TomBuhler2016
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sbradshaw
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Re: Sacrament meeting program designs

#20

Post by sbradshaw »

Looks really nice – the fonts you chose help communicate that sacrament meeting is an important event.
Samuel Bradshaw • If you desire to serve God, you are called to the work.
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