Alabaster
November 2016 – April 2021
Company: Alabaster Co.
Creative direction: Bryan Chung
The 4 Gospels : Print—Editorial
Alabaster is a publication of the 4 gospels from the Holy Bible in which visual imagery and thoughtful design is integrated within the text to create a new and beautiful bible reading experience. I was hired by the founders of Alabaster bible as the lead designer to develop their initial branding and design the layouts, typography, and cover of the 4 books. The main goal for the design is to create layouts that are simple and balanced so that the readers can have a richer reading experience as they take in both text and imagery for each passage.
The project was launched on Kickstarter and is now also available on Amazon. To learn more about Alabaster, visit their website: Alabaster Co.
Alabaster
The Book of Psalms : Print—Editorial
—The Book of Psalms is currently in production stages and will be published by the end of April—
After the launch of Alabaster the 4 Gospels, Alabaster Co. is continuing their vision on reimagining the Bible reading experience through the publication of the Book of Psalms. Psalms is a book in the Bible that contains raw, honest poems from thousands of years ago telling the story of humans and the desire to know God.
The main design challenge for Psalms is the arrangement of the typography. Unlike the Gospels, Psalms was written in a poetic and lyrical manner, which created shorter line lengths and a lot of line breaks, verse numbers, and indentations. In addition, the line breaks can't be edited just to make a beautiful rag because it will change the meaning of the content. Justified type setting is not going to work for Psalms, therefore I had to come up with a design solution to accommodate the context of the contents but still keep Alabaster's design aesthetic of simplicity in mind. The result was to get rid of the indents, have a rag right type setting, with the verses separated from the body copy, and allowing the lines to break as the author had intended in order to stay true to the contents but still improve the reading flow and experience.
