SERIES BRANDING: Searching for wisdom

Get wisdom; get insight; do not forget, and do not turn away from the words of my mouth. Do not forsake her, and she will keep you; love her, and she will guard you. The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom, and whatever you get, get insight. - Proverbs 4:5–7

Wisdom—seemingly practical, pragmatic, and cautious—in reality is mining the depths of God to find that very thing which makes him God. It is a holy pursuit to pursue wisdom and it is a holy reward to enjoy its benefits. At first thought, we are drawn to guides and manuals from field notes to National Parks, beautiful on the outside, but oh so boring on the inside. Wisdom my friends, is not this. Wisdom is not a code of conduct or an answer key to the tests of life, it’s so much more! It requires curiosity, It requires understanding, it requires searching. So I started exploring the idea of buried treasure, a hidden gem—think Raiders of the Lost Ark—something that unfolds in value and worth. I decided to go with a san-serif font—because wisdom is more art than academic— and wanted to keep it light and defined. No bold fonts here, my typical go-to ‘cause ya know, punk rock. Once I found the right “suit,” images began to dance around each character as I took a deeper look, unfolding more and more depth and complexity. Iconography beckons a curious heart to look beyond the letters and seek what lies behind. The final and most difficult part for me was to determine the environment that this design would live in. Every good type needs a home and still there was one more piece of furniture that was missing. One key characteristic about wisdom is its holiness. Its counter-cultural nature. Obviously, this led me to Dead Poet Society (Robin Williams, 1989), after all, it was the character John Keating that said, “There's a time for daring and there's a time for caution, and a wise man understands which is called for.” Whenever I think of that movie, I think of that classroom and I picture the messy chalkboard behind Robin Williams. What better incapsulates our feeble pursuits of wisdom than a chalkboard with a thousand mistakes and eraser marks. It was perfect. I found an old chalkboard image and started building a texture that displays the wisdom of God rightly standing in contrast and in front of our messy solutions we’ve chased over and over. Our ways are not his ways. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:9). Keep searching, God’s wisdom is yours in Christ Jesus our Lord.