A few weeks ago, it seems luck was on my side, because I won an online competition with very little effort. No, I was not the millionth visitor to some dodgy website. I managed to snare a prize pack from Aus Infront, which featured a ticket to a design thinking and branding workshop hosted by Ian Anderson of Design Republic.

I considered this a grand opportunity to enhance my less-than-perfect branding skills, so I attended with an open mind, ready to absorb everything this guy had to say. But that’s not the way it turned out. After a brief introduction we were set a task, described as ‘an impossible brief’ (at which point my confidence level started to free-fall).

The challenge, to be addressed in small groups, was to re-brand God.

We were instructed to treat God like a real client seeking a new identity, in the face of diminishing market share and an outdated logo that was sending the wrong message to the modern market.

Could he have given us a harder brief?! Target audience: everyone! Current logo: practically ubiquitous.

But the brief required a response. So, after hours of brainstorming and trying to understand the client’s position, my group decided to work with a fundamental selling point of God: death. Our rationale was that everyone will die, and everyone is terrified of that fact, so we invest in the security that is associated with God, i.e. heaven.

So here is our re-imagined visual identity for God.

The lesson for us was that there is no such thing as an impossible brief, as long as you spend the necessary time to understand your brand, its positioning and the audience.

Think it works? Were we on the right track? What would you have done?

Christina Zsori is a graphic designer and Industry Placement Student at Wellmark. 

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