The Seventh-day Adventist denomination revealed its latest visual identity standards today at the General Conference’s spring meetings in Maryland.
I’m impressed.
The core font family, Advent Sans, is open source, based on Google font typography, and designed for more languages than those that use the characters A-Z.
The twenty-year-old Bible-cross-flame symbol is unchanged and set on a triangular field. It now appears in a single color instead of two complementary colors, and includes a circular field variant. The symbol’s use guidelines are people-centered, generous, and designed with real-life contexts in mind.
Though [the symbol] may not communicate everything, because of its consistent use it now carries a deep significance for all who are familiar with it. The symbol, like all symbols, functions much more as a container for attributed meaning than as a theological statement. It is we, Seventh-day Adventist members, who give that symbol meaning.” —The Communications department of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists
Recommended colors evoke the rich and grounding colors of nature.
And the stroke of genius: an implicit visual structure for print media called the creation grid, which divides the field into seven equal vertical parts, reserves the seventh for the denomination’s symbol, and requires contrast between the first six and the last.
Imagine if the artists ran the .org. Thanks to the denomination’s designers, and despite the consternation of its administrators, I’ve been imagining that all day.
Explore the identity site.