ChurchZen

Or “how to not look boring” as our kids say. Children have incredibly high design values. They know exactly what typefaces, colours and overall “look” are part of the aesthetic of their favourite cartoons or games. So designing posters and flyers that connect with children means paying attention to these things because they quite rightly dismiss anything that looks like you didn’t try. The good news if you’re doing anything around Minecraft is that there are several Minecraft-look typefaces or fonts available for free under Creative Commons licensing that can be used for creating great, authentic-looking designs. 

We’ve written previously about using Minecraft as church here. It’s online, so lends itself well to the context of social distancing, and is characterised by creativity and co-operation, so in many ways a great place for a church to be.

To make an authentic-looking Minecraft poster, using Minecraft-style typefaces, you can either use a “font generator” such as the one at FontMeMe.Com where you enter the text you want made into a Minecraft look and then save the result as a .png file to use in your design. 

Alternatively, you can download the typeface to add it as a font which can be used in the normal way in any software you use for making posters.  DaFont.com has a typeface called Minecrafter. Once you’ve downloaded the TrueType font (.ttf) file, you need to install it on your computer so that it’s picked up by your software. (These have worked for us, but obviously please take your usual precautions about downloading and installing anything.)

We like to work with both typeface options because they do slightly different things. The font generator offers upper- and lowercase text, which is more readable for the amount of text you might want on a poster. And the DaFont Minecrafter typeface has the advantage of having the classic Minecraft creeper “A” but because it only offers uppercase letters, only really works for small amounts of text. 

Now you’ve got the text looking great, you might want to include some authentic Minecraft backgrounds or other visual elements. Pixabay, one of the free-to-use photo websites, has a good range of Minecraft-themed photos available. Above is a design we put together recently to inspire you. It was approved by our kids. If you would like a design similar to this for something your church is organising, just get in touch!