Global Identity Guidelines 2.0

Preface

And though we may look, pray, read, think, worship, sing, and share differently, we all look forward to the Sabbath. We all look forward to the future, when Jesus will come again. It’s in our very name, this anticipation of the seventh-day Sabbath, and this longing for another Advent. Our history and future as a movement is rooted in this awareness of time, and the prophetic importance of our message in these final hours of earth’s history. We are a diverse people, looking backward and forward, called to share with everyone that the world is on the verge of beauty.

No matter where we are, what our organizations look like, how we live out our beliefs, and how we keep the Sabbath, we are all longing for that last day when we can finally be present with our God.

We have this hope, and since our beginning we have spoken, published, produced, and designed a diversity of materials to share this hope with others. But up until now, we haven’t had a unified strategy for how to present it across the thousands of materials we create every week.

Our churches, ministries, and organizations have spent such a long time trying to stand out that it can be difficult for people to tell we all stand together. In designing on our own, we have sometimes forgotten to think about our context and what would best help our audience know we are part of the same body. As the world becomes overwhelmed with information, as consumer brands evolve their approach, and as content producers saturate the market, it is becoming increasingly important to find a way to help people know we are all Seventh-day Adventists.

So how can we present ourselves? How can we use typefaces, colors, patterns, images, and layouts to let people know they are looking at Adventist materials? How can we set up a system that supports an ever-increasing number of formats, mediums, and materials?

Most importantly, how can we create a system flexible enough to accommodate our diversity, while still presenting ourselves as a unified body?

After months of prayerfully exploring these tough questions, testing different approaches, and collaborating with church communicators and designers across the world, we’ve developed a system we believe can achieve our goals of supporting both unity and diversity. It is our earnest belief that global participation in this living, dynamic identity system will aid in sharing the beautiful news of the Advent message in effective and compelling ways.