When I bump into designers like Mark Arnold, I’m made more alive to the heart and soul of design. Not only is Mark passionate about design, he’s been exploring new ways to express his faith in God visually with some stunning results. Most notably, his groundbreaking work on Philip Yancy’s What’s So Amazing About Grace—Visual Edition and Lee Strobel’s The Case For Faith Visual Edition (a 4 MB PDF file) are redefining the intersection of culture, faith and the arts. He’s worked in just about every type of design environment you could think of and currently finds himself living in an historic community in St. Louis where he works from his home office for clients from around the country . He’s married to Tammy and they have three children. I thought you would be interested in hearing about his experiences, so I’ve asked him to drop by B L A N K for a chat…

BLANK | What’s the story behind these visual editions of popular Christian works? Is this a typical “book made into a movie/visual book” or is there a new wave of visual stories waiting to be told with design? Who’s listening to these visual stories about Christianity anyway? What do you hope they’ll hear?

MARK | The story goes like this: I knew someone who knew someone at Zondervan who, like us, wanted to share these great writings about God with people who had never read them. We got together for an afternoon and talked about “the book of the future.” We talked about the Christian subculture and the walls it had built between the church and the people outside of it. We talked about magazines and newspapers and readers with short attention spans who NEVER read books. We talked about how powerful books like The Case For Faith and What’s So Amazing About Grace are and how there are so many people out there who’s lives would be changed forever if they could just hear what the authors have to say.

What do I hope the readers of these books will hear? There are so many powerful messages in these books, but I suppose that what I hope they’ll hear the most is that the creator of the universe knows who they are and that He is pursuing them so that, if they’ll just stop and listen for a moment, He can tell them that He loves them deeply.

BLANK | Can we create visual stories that explore heart and soul issues that are not tied to a known written work and connect with the reader as effectively?

MARK | Yes. In fact, many, and maybe even most, of the positive responses to the visual edition books have come from people who have never read the originals.

BLANK | Describe the creative process for What’s So Amazing About Grace-Visual Edition.

MARK | My partners on these and similar projects are Kurt Wilson in Grand Rapids and Pete Gall in Indianapolis. Kurt heads up an organization called Compass Outreach Ministry that creates and licenses marketing campaigns to non-profits that include television, outdoor, radio, print and direct mail. Pete is an author who most recently published a great book titled Gall. Five years of unfettered Christian exploration somewhere between youth group and the rest of life. The project was to take Philip Yancey’s million selling book as raw material and reshape it into something entirely new that would communicate with a different audience. Clearly the first step in the development of the visual edition was to immerse ourselves in the original book. Each of us read it and listened to the audiobook multiple times before making any notes. After we were extremely familiar with the book, we each went through and pulled out any excerpt that we felt had any possibility at all of making our edition and developed a list of approximately 400 excerpts. This list became our master and we went back to it time and time again as the book began to take shape. It was also at this time that we arrived at some guidelines for selecting excerpts. Mr. Yancey’s book primarily discusses three types of grace: the grace given to man by God, the grace given between people (or lack of it), and grace as given (or not) by the Church as a corporate body to those both inside and outside it’s walls. We felt like a 70/20/10 mix of those three types, 70% being about God’s grace, would be the best ratios for this project.

Then the real fun began. I began pulling out passages and developing designs for them. I completely enjoyed this part of the process and it was extremely rewarding to meditate on the passages as I worked on executions for them. I believe it changed me forever. Anyway, I just kept working and working and built up quite a stack of material for the book. By the way—there are a few spreads in the book that I didn’t design. This was just too much fun to keep to myself so I gave a few spreads (a few was all I could bring myself to let go of) to my brother and a friend to design.

Once we had created a large body of concepts we storyboarded the book out like a film, taping each scene (spread or page) up on a wall—looking at them all at once. Because we didn’t have to follow a linear storyline we could, in large part, place any spread at any point in the book. That freed us to move them around to adjust the pacing of the book as well as to balance the art and conceptual content for maximum emotional impact.

By the way, we had what I felt was a small production budget for a page count of 144 so we had to make some important decisions about where the money would go. Obviously, we didn’t want this book to look like your typical gift book or a cheap line extension that had been quickly thrown together. In fact, we didn’t want the finished book to look like budget or time had been an issue at all so we knew that we needed to spot in a few pieces of art that were world class and to design each and every spread with as a high level of excellence as we were capable of. We are very happy that we were able to work out deals with photographers such as Mary Ellen Mark and Sabastiao Salgado and that some of their work could appear in our book.

One other thing and this may sound a little incredible to you (it certainly does to me.): There were times that, as we worked on the book, that we really felt like it was coming together in spite of our efforts if that makes any sense to you. Little things happened along the way that drastically changed the approach we took on some spreads or the book as a whole and it felt very much like God was participating. Almost like He was saying something like, “No, no, no- like this. Now see, isn’t that much better!?”

BLANK | You’ve really avoided a lot of stereotypical “Christian” imagery.

MARK | Well, first of all, there’s simply no power in the cliché. We want people to have to actively process their thoughts about Grace—to turn to Jesus and ask what He says. We never considered staying in the subculture’s comfort zone—sunset shoreline paintings or flying eagles or weeping carpenter greeting card stuff—because that’s part of what makes Christians so cliché to the rest of the world, and while it doesn’t matter if Christian art wants to be cliché, it matters a great deal if the big things, like Grace, are lost to the world because they come wrapped in packages the world rejects or simply ignores. We believe that in some ways the Visual Edition takes the message of God’s love away from the church and gives it back to the people.

BLANK | Explain what you mean by taking the message away from the church and restoring it to the people. Sounds interesting. Do you ever feel your work getting caught in a Christian design ghetto? How do you break out?

MARK | Yancey calls for us to be “conveyers of grace” and not “avoiders of contagion”. Bob Briner, in his book Roaring Lambs put it this way: “Do you honestly believe that our big churches and highly visible Christian leaders have brought about a movement that is taken seriously in this country? We feel we are making a difference because we are so important to ourselves. We have created a phenomenal subculture with our own media, entertainment, educational system, and political hierarchy so that we have the sense that we’re doing a lot. But what we’ve really done is create a ghetto that is easily dismissed by the rest of society. What I’m calling for is a radically different way of thinking about our world. Instead of running from it, we need to rush into it. And instead of hanging around the fringes of our culture, we need to be right smack dab in the middle of it.” I believe that’s a great description of Jesus ministry. He went outside the walls of the church and took the message of God to the people. He told powerful stories that were grounded in the culture around him and in the lives of his audience. Van Gogh called Jesus “a greater artist than all the other artists.” That sounds to me like a good model to follow. Ok—but, now that we’re out there—out in the culture—what are we going to say to everyone? Should we use our art to speak out against the sinful lifestyles of those around us? I am sure that there are times we should speak out against evil but I was reminded this week that Jesus didn’t come into the world to make bad people good. He came to make dead people live. He came to make us all alive to God. Maybe we should use our talents to, whenever and wherever we can, offer a positive uplifting alternative, a more excellent way of life.

And while we’re on the subject I can’t resist passing on to you something that a friend pointed out to me. It’s a monologue from the movie, The Big Kahuna, which is about three industrial lubricant representatives at a trade show and stars Danny Devito and Kevin Spacey. One of the characters is referred to as Baptist Bob because he is a deeply pious young man and well, sort of a Ned Flanders type if you’re familiar with The Simpsons. The movie is fantastic and lines from it have found their way into a lot of our discussions as we look at the work we’re creating that evokes God’s name. I think you’ll find it very insightful and it goes something like this:

Phil (Devito): “You too are an honest man Bob. I really believe that. Somewhere deep down inside of you is something that strives to be honest. The question that you have to ask yourself is has it touched the whole of my life? That means that you preaching Jesus is no different than Larry or anybody else preaching lubricants. It doesn’t matter if you’re preaching Jesus, Buddha, civil rights or how to make money in real estate with no money down. That doesn’t make you a human being; it makes you a marketing rep. If you want to talk to someone honestly as a human being ask them about their kids, find out what his dreams are. Just to find out. For no other reason. Because as soon as you lay your hands on a conversation to steer it, it’s not a conversation anymore it’s a pitch. And you’re not a human being you’re a marketing rep.”

BLANK | Tell us a little about your career. Seems like you’ve endured a few years of revisions with resulting in an interesting journey.

MARK | There’s really not one thing I can point to because I’ve really enjoyed the whole thing. I’ve been able to experience a lot of this country in a way few people get to. Projects have taken me to all of the large metropolitan areas including NYC, LA, Chicago, Orlando, Seattle, San Francisco, Boston, etc. And I’ve been able to spend time in places that are a little more out of the way like Cameron, LA and Yakima, WA among many, many others. And what I’ve enjoyed about the travel is that it has allowed me to meet people whose stories are quite a bit different from mine. I never get tired of hearing someone I’ve just met talk about their life—their story. I’ve been fascinated by all of them: CEOs of large corporations, a man who hand carves decoys for duck hunters, professional baseball players, directors, photographers, a riverboat captain, a Wisconsin native who’s running a dairy in California, a man who runs a homeless shelter, a homeless man staying in that shelter. Then, of course, I’ve worked with quite a few talented and interesting people. Striving to create great work with people who share that passion has been very rewarding and a whole lot of fun. And, currently, I get to spend a lot of my time working with some of the world’s best writings about God?! I feel very fortunate to get paid to have this much fun.

BLANK | Have you ever had a season where you didn’t enjoy what you were doing?

MARK | Yes, of course, nothing’s perfect all the time… except my marriage of course. (laughs) I was trying to keep us in my wife’s hometown—Cincinnati, Ohio—in 1989, and I took a job at an ad agency that wasn’t a good fit for me. The owner and the account team had a completely different agenda than the creative department and we all made each other absolutely dread coming in to work everyday. I left after a year and thankfully haven’t even come close to being that miserable again.

BLANK | How do you fan the creative fires?

MARK | I really don’t think about trying to stay current or do work that could be described as ground-breaking, etc. Artist Mark Rothko said, “I’m not interested in relationships of color or form or anything else…I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions—tragedy, ecstasy, doom and so on…The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them.” I can relate to that in my own small way. When I’m working on a project, I’m not trying to simply come up with something that is cutting-edge. I’m trying to use tools like typography, photography, color, etc., to express visually the core of what the headline or text is expressing through words. And I’m trying to do that in a way that provokes a strong emotional response in the person I’m trying to have a conversation with through the piece. So the things that inspire me are the things that move me.

And there is inspiration like that everywhere if you look for it. I’m currently reading a book about Hitchcock and the production of Vertigo and I’m finding a lot of things that I can apply to the print projects, as well as film, I’m currently working on. I’m a fan of powerful communication whether it’s from the ’30s, ’50s, ’80s, or today. Woodward. Carson. Bass. Rodchenko. Émigré. Tomato. Sterling. Plazm. Tob Bell and Nooma, I could go on and on: films like 21 Grams or HBO’s Carnivale; magazines like Nest and Adrenalin; ad campaigns like Goodby Silverstein’s + (plus) campaign for HP; Imaginary forces and others are doing a lot of amazing things with film titles; Web sites such as praystation.com and youworkforthem.com. Well, you get the idea.

BLANK | What caused you to make the decision to leave a major agency to work with non-profits and Christian organizations?

MARK | A midlife crisis? A moral crisis? A search for significance? Restlessness? God? I’m still not sure what (or Who) I would say really started me down this path. I was into my fourth year at the best agency I’d ever worked at. Graphis had just named CORE one of the top 10 print agencies in the world, and I was working with people that I really loved, and who I still miss a lot. That was 1999, and I was reading a lot of books that year that were causing me to rethink many areas of my life. I recently reviewed my journals from that time and many of the passages I had written down from those books jumped out at me. One was from Chuck Colson’s How Now Shall We Live? where he says that “In every action we take, we are doing one of two things: either helping to create a hell on earth or helping to bring down a foretaste of heaven.” Another one I’d written down from that book was “Satan wants to kill, steal and destroy. He does this through lies.” I had copied portions of Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline, especially from chapter six, about simplicity which certainly runs counter to our culture here in the US and even more so to the culture of marketing and advertising. Interestingly, I’d also written down this mantra that CORE was developing at the time for an online retailer called UncommonGoods: “There is a series of glossy photographs inside of each one of us that more accurately reflects our individual selves. A place of originality. Where our thoughts are expressed in curves. Our beliefs drawn in distinct lines. A life that can’t be prepackaged by someone else. Or bought off a shelf. These places are real. Each of us can get there from here. We don’t need more money. We don’t need different jobs. What we need are uncommon goods.” Obviously I had a problem with that piece. But, as I began to look through the work we’d done up to that point, really look at it, I realized that we’d told that lie before. That I had told that lie before. It’s just that’d I’d been a lot more subtle about it.

Over the next few weeks a sense of panic began to take hold. I remember sitting in front of my monitor, staring at it, wondering what I was going to do. I didn’t want to work in ad agencies anymore. I’d lost all of my passion for it. A passion that had been a driving force in my life for a long time. But I kept wondering, “What will I do? I don’t know how to do anything else and I’ve got a wife and three children to provide for.” I was totally lost. Eventually I began to find my way. I began by doing a lot of research online about faith-based organizations and I would send samples of my work to just about anyone I came across: Prison Fellowship Ministries, Youth Specialties, The Family Research Council, Promise Keepers, Association of Gospel Rescue Missions, Integrity Music, Lifeway- book publishers, music publishers, non-profits… I would send out emails, make phone calls—anything I could do to make contact and see if there was any possibility of working with them on marketing or design projects. I began playing with the idea of an advertising and design firm whose focus would be on these types of accounts. I have to say here that I was not interested in just working with these groups. My goal was, and still is, to create work that is as good as anything done in the secular world. I’ve had to walk away from some projects because great work was not going to be the end result. Anyway, after a few months of this with mixed results, one of the people I’d sent work to pointed me towards a non-profit ad agency in Grand Rapids, MI. As it turns out, Compass Arts was founded by people who were on a journey very similar to mine. They’d worked in prominent agencies on visible accounts but had decided to try and do more with their time and talents and they had already created some outstanding work for The Salvation Army and The Association of Gospel Rescue Missions among others. We hit it off immediately and it was just a matter of a few months until I left CORE to work with them as well as some freelance accounts I had at the time. Now, I don’t want anyone to get the idea that I believe all secular advertising is immoral. I don’t. And, in fact, I still do a lot of work through agencies for clients like Gillette, Coca Cola, The St. Louis Cardinals Baseball Team, American Express and AT&T. But, I am very careful about the messages I help produce in those categories. I don’t want to create needs or to encourage people to fill the God-shaped hole in their souls with a car or a tennis shoe or a stick of gum.

BLANK | What would you say to someone just starting out in design?

MARK |
[ 1 ] Find a mentor as soon as you can.
[ 2 ] Take the job at the best place you get an offer from even if that means a lower position and less cash. This is where your true education will begin.
[ 3 ] Make career moves based on your passions—not on your retirement account.

BLANK | Mark, thanks for stopping by B L A N K and sharing your thoughts on design. Any parting shots?

MARK | Give yourself to others. Not just your talents. Not just your money. You. Don’t let your art become a substitute for personal relationships. I’ve done that and found that I missed a lot of blessings and more importantly missed God’s plan for me. James 1:27 says “Real religion, the kind that passes muster before God the Father, is this: Reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, and guard against corruption from the godless world.” (The Message) Imagine the impact we could have on the world if every Christian dropped their false religion and their picket signs (and maybe their design or marketing projects once in a while?) and applied this simple verse daily.

Thanks for having me over. I’ve really enjoyed it.

If you would like to contact Mark or view some of his other work, check out his portfolio (4MB PDF file).