We’re doing a little bal­anc­ing act today. As we’re barely a month away from the Amer­i­can elec­tions, it was to be expected that polit­i­cally charged sub­jects might pop up, even on a pri­mar­ily type-​oriented blog. We are ulti­mately part of the world. So we thought it would be a sound idea to post two entries with dif­fer­ent world views one after the other, to pre­vent people from accus­ing us of any bias. ;)

UK pub­lish­ing house Hodder & Stoughton have pub­lished a new paper­back edi­tion of the Bible with a remark­able cover designed by Crush Design & Art Direc­tion Ltd. On their web­site the Brighton based cre­ative agency explains:

“We were set a tough chal­lenge with this brief to create a fresh new look for The Bible and make it a best sell­ing summer read. Our illus­tra­tions made this book the summer’s must have acces­sory for any non card car­ry­ing Christian.

Crush was formed ten years ago in Hoxton, London and relo­cated to Brighton in 2001, but their client-​base remains pri­mar­ily in London and over­seas. Founder Carl Rush attrib­utes their suc­cess to being “a small com­pany with big ideas and a great work­ing atmos­phere; we have music play­ing, good vibes and work bloody hard putting in long hours”, he admits. Crush is made up of five design­ers and illus­tra­tors work­ing for clients that span TV, music, pub­lish­ing, adver­tis­ing and pack­ag­ing. Their illus­tra­tion agency Agen­cyRush got them the com­mis­sion from the reli­gious divi­sion of Hodder & Stoughton.

The idea behind this edi­tion of the Bible was to encour­age people who might never have owned a Bible to feel com­fort­able buying a copy. Whether or not you believe in its con­tent, you can’t deny its sig­nif­i­cance – even in today’s world – yet many people would prob­a­bly be reluc­tant to buy a more tra­di­tional look­ing Bible. Even­tu­ally 4000 copies were sold; the book­sellers liked the inno­v­a­tive approach and seemed very happy to stock the Bible. Crush expe­ri­enced a fan­tas­tic reac­tion from the public send­ing them e-mails, asking where to get the book and com­ment­ing on how strong the cover is.

The com­plete cover illus­tra­tion with­out any typo­graph­i­cal ele­ments (click the image for a full res­o­lu­tion version).

The inspi­ra­tion for the cover illus­tra­tion came from the back cover copy lines. Carl Rush con­sid­ers them one of finest write ups he has seen, and would cer­tainly make him inter­ested enough to read the book. The text men­tions “Mankind’s poi­son­ing of a beau­ti­ful world” and asks “The cause of wars and intol­er­ance, or the most impor­tant book ever writ­ten? How well do you know the bible?” So the idea ger­mi­nated to con­jure up a really con­tem­po­rary image of the Garden of Eden. On the flip side of the image Crush tried to illus­trate the pos­si­ble “poi­son­ing and destruc­tion of a beau­ti­ful world”. There­fore the illus­tra­tion shows Adam and Eve fat with the overindul­gence of a con­sumer soci­ety gone out of con­trol. The trees have died from pol­lu­tion and skulls illus­trate the destruc­tion of the animal kingdom.

Carl Rush admits that the ques­tion he heard the most was: “How did you get away with this design?” The studio pro­posed three visu­als and the client picked Adam and Eve – it’s as simple as that. They didn’t make Crush change a thing. Indeed – as unbe­liev­able as it may sound – there were no cor­rec­tions. Crush just put some more detail into the image and pol­ished it. Unfor­tu­nately they didn’t get to add the type as it was taken care of by the publisher’s in-​house art depart­ment. Carl told that if it was up to him he would have kept a very simple sans serif, so he’s not sure what font they used.

Detail of the cover illus­tra­tion
The cover is an arrest­ing design. The first thing that hits you are the glow­ing colours and the sur­pris­ing ver­ti­cal divi­sion in a pos­i­tive and a neg­a­tive mirror image. The illus­tra­tion style is an unex­pected blend of naive art and infor­ma­tion design rem­i­nis­cent of the pic­tograms devel­oped by Otl Aicher for the 1972 Munich Olympics. Exam­in­ing the illus­tra­tion up close reveals a number of intrigu­ing details beg­ging for inter­pre­ta­tion. Crush def­i­nitely suc­ceeded in what they set out to do – the eye-​popping cover looks fresh and invit­ing. And even if some people may dis­miss it as eye-​candy, it is damn good candy, and a very effec­tive design.

Via FontBlog.