Idea #11: Graphic Designers Making Bible Stories Come to Life Visually
Graphic designers and visual artists use their unique mix of talents to visualize Bible stories in beautiful ways that texts and words alone don’t. Throughout the history of art, many great artists have been inspired by stories in the Bible. (cf. ArtBible.info) Visual artists today use a wide variety of digital design tools that are in many ways more versatile than a traditional canvas and paints.
In New York City, in the building where American Bible Society is located, the Museum of Biblical Art (MOBIA) beautifully “celebrates and interprets art inspired by the Bible and its cultural legacy in Jewish and Christian traditions through exhibitions, education, and scholarship.”
The Bible continues to inspire artists today—here’s a short list of “designer Bibles” with designers’ artistic depictions of the Holy Scriptures:
At FiftyTwoVerses.com, graphic designer Leslie Hill is publishing a new illustrated Bible verse as a print every week in 2014. Yes, every week for 52 weeks.
The Minimum Bible at minimumbible.com (cf. “The Bible Reduced to Minimalist Posters: Good graphic design distills the Old and New Testament into 66 retro-style posters.” (Fast Company, March 2014)
“THE MINIMUM BIBLE is a graphic design collection by Joseph Novak” that’s made “to portray biblical themes and texts visually using a minimalist style with a found-item overlay.”
Word Bible Designs - Jim LePage created a poster-style design for each book in the Bible cf. “Honesty above propriety” - Jim LePage takes a new look at the Bible (interviewed by Rachel Held Evans, 2012)
Old & New Project has this tagline “a project of biblical proportions” and indeed it is. Curated by Jim LePage and Troy DeShano, Old & New Project “provides a platform for contemporary graphic artists (illustrators, artists, designers) to exhibit works themed on Biblical stories and passages. It also aims to introduce a new online audience to Biblical art, attempting to replace popular, yet sometimes low-quality, contemporary Biblical artwork with the kind of accessible and honorable work that has historically been associated with the Bible.”
And then there are data-driven approaches to visualizing the content of the text in the Bible. Rather than artistically interpreting the narrative of the stories in the Bible, some others in this digital age are crunching lots of data to come up with visualizations, like this chart that visualizes the 63,779 cross references found in the Bible, depicted by a single arc - the color corresponds to the distance between the two chapters, creating a rainbow-like effect.
There’s even a blog for Bible Visualization at biblevis.wordpress.com. Have you seen other recent imagery of the Bible, its stories and/or its text? Add a comment and share what you like about it.
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This article is part of the blog series, 66 Ideas for .BIBLE Domain Names, with practical ideas for using .BIBLE domain names. Individuals and organizations can now register .BIBLE domain names that are more shareable, memorable, and meaningful at any accredited registrar.