Stale Metaphors Are Bad

Last week I gave you some practical tips on how to find and select free images to use as song backgrounds. Today as we close out our first conversation about images, I wanted to talk about this video clip of Dan Bracken, a graphic designer at Ginghamsburg Church, sharing some tips with us:




One of the things that really jumped out at me in that clip was Dan's suggestion to "push beyond the metaphor of using a salt shaker for the salt of the earth or a light bulb to be the light of the world."

If you’re like me you fall into this trap every once and a while. Overused metaphors are an easy escape when you’re crunched for time but after a while overused metaphors don’t have the same impact for people.

So let’s say we’re trying to find an image that will fit to be projected during a time of confession in your the service. Sure you could use the picture of a person praying, a cross, someone kneeling, etc. but those are all pretty overused when it comes to church in general, so let’s try to think of something new.

Do a little brainstorming and make a list of all the images, symbols and words that come to mind when you think confession: crosses, nails, sin, death, burdens, weights, chains, prison, guilty, sad, tears, lonely, isolated, storms, waterfall

Now do an image search with one of these words on one of the free image libraries I listed in my last post. For example: I decided to search for death and began to see pictures of dead trees start showing up in my search results. I never would have thought to depict confession with the metaphor of a dead tree but because of this little bit of extra brainstorming and reflection, I pushed beyond the overused metaphor and found something fresh and new:

Confession is the time when we admit to God that sin has drained the life out of us and we are in need of a fresh start.

When have you pushed beyond an overused metaphor to find something new? Tell me about it: