Why I Backed a Kickstarter Effort to Redesign the Bible
Someone is redesigning the Bible.
Perhaps your reaction is similar to mine when I encountered this news: somewhere between a smirk and an eye roll. Is there nothing that designers don’t want to reenvision? Does the most popular book of all time really need an aesthetic overhaul?
And yet, roughly 20 minutes after I instinctively dismissed the idea, I had backed it on Kickstarter. Here’s why.
My intention, when I decided to watch the Kickstarter video pitching the project, was to confirm my hunch that this was a pointless undertaking, and enjoy some yuks at what would no doubt be a pompous promotion.
And, indeed, the video is wildly full of itself — a moody musical score, lush imagery tides caressing the beach, gently blown wheat, and dime-store-wisdom observations along the lines of “People love stories,” all presented with disconcertingly high production values. (The curious are even admonished to “watch the video in HD.”)
I did not want to have coffee with Mr. Designer. (His name is Adam Lewis Greene.) And I could have lived without the Book Design 101 mini-lecture intercut with images of him wandering the wild coast. And yet … I slowly realized he was actually making some interesting points.
It’s true that a typical Bible is an off-putting mass of tiny, dense text; it’s also true that I’ve never read past Genesis.
Greene’s solution involves splitting the Good Book into four volumes, each about the size of a standard hardback novel. The Old Testament gets divided into three: the “books of Moses and the former prophets”; the “latter prophets”; and the “writings.” The fourth volume is the New Testament. (Greene maintains that the one-book version of the Bible is an idea that only came about in the Middle Ages.)
Greene has also made a new typeface that actually looks pretty nice. He’s eliminated verse numbers and notes. And he’s using top-end materials and binding techniques.
So he’s treating the object with respect and trying to make it genuinely readable.
And as objects, the cloth-cover books look kinda great.
No wonder Greene has long since exceeded his $37,000 goal, and as I write this has thousands of backers who have pledged about $585,000 and counting.
Will this new design approach actually end up causing them to read the Bible? I’m curious. And I’ll find out in December. That’s when the volumes are supposed to ship to backers — and as of this morning, that includes me.
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