The cover of the New Testament is a piercing green eye heavily caked with black eyeliner. The visitation has a photo of a veiled African woman with a clinging young son. And the Book of Revelations features a man in a third world country lighting himself on fire. This is the Bible Illuminated. The text is abbreviated, straightforward, and in column form, creating a book that looks like COLORS, the Benetton magazine.

This is the work of Dag Söderberg, CEO of the largest advertising agency in Scandinavia. He said his goal was to re-brand the Bible. But rather, I think he came closer to re-branding Christianity. Or at least showing how you can re-skin those stories like you would the code for a web page and fit them to scenes commonly found in National Geographic.

He didn’t have to stop there though. He could just have easily substituted Batman or Superman for the Messiah. Even Will Smith in Hancock or Sigourney Weaver in Aliens. Whether or not you believe in the religious aspect of the bible, it’s full of tales that have been told and retold since the beginning of time.

Links:

The Bible Illuminated

Colors Magazine