It’s not out of the ordinary to have projector screens & LCD or Plasma TVs in your auditorium or through your church building, but many churches miss the opportunity to capitalize on the reach that these screens have. For instance, we have screens in our auditorium for lyrics and scriptures during service. Before service, we use them as a 20 minute countdown to service starting. During that 20 minute countdown, we have various screens on a 7-second rotation. They include silencing your phone before service, moving backgrounds with our logo, follow along with us and download the YouVersion Bible App, and our monthly new-membership dinner.
We also have 4 LCDs in the foyer. 2 that duplicate the countdown happening in the auditorium, 1 that’s designated for kids check in, and 1 that’s designated for our Horseshoe information center (we call it the horseshoe because… well, it’s shaped like a horseshoe. Also, during service, when we say “Sign Up At The Horseshoe in the foyer,” just about every new visitor can figure out where that is any why it’s called that.)
For the Horseshoe TV specifically, we like to change up that image every week, but not have it rotate – just static. It’s a single image that either tells what’s happening this week at Life Church, or it’s information about what you can do at the horseshoe (sign up for an event on the iPads, order a CD or DVD of this week’s service, etc.)
When we have a specific registration focus, the Horseshoe TV will say “Register for Life Groups (our small groups) here!”
If we have a training session during the week or on a Saturday, I’ll put the name of the session and the room where it’s being held. I also include arrows to point the way. We do have signage in the building, but I’m a fan of strategic redundancy.
I like to use unsplash.com images for the background of the horseshoe TV. They’re colorful and high resolution, so I can use just a portion of the image if that’s what suits best. In this case for design, I’m looking to maximize contrast (so it can be read across the foyer even with all the lights on) and maximize font size. I also like to include our ‘L’ icon in some way if it doesn’t detract from the design.
Here are a few of the horseshoe designs we’ve used, and at the bottom you’ll find the layered photoshop files that you can use. Our horseshoe TV is 1080p widescreen (1920×1080 px) and your photoshop file should be RGB color because it’s going to be shown on a screen (rather than CMYK if it’s going to be printed.) We run ours from a USB stick that slides in the back – the only cable running to that TV is for power.
In the future, we may get an Apple TV so we can remotely change the image, or series of images, but until now, that hasn’t been necessary.
PSD Files:
This Week at Life Church Horseshoe TV
