Negatively Positive, Positively Negative

Established in 2007, the Centre for Public Christianity (shortened as CPX) is an independent, non-denominational, nonprofit media company based in Sydney, Australia, that offers a Christian perspective on contemporary life by supporting mainstream media and the general public with as-unbiased-as-possible print, video, and audio materials that explore both the relevance of Christianity today and the relevance of all other belief structures and religions. CPX releases a weekly podcast; maintains an archive of articles, videos, and audio; curates an active stream of religion-related news; and has recently produced a documentary, For the Love of God (with the subtitle of “How the church is BETTER + WORSE than you ever imagined”). The new identity has been designed by Sydney-based For the People.

Their new identity slightly alters Christianity’s most iconic asset, the ‘cross’, to create a ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ symbol, reflecting their contemporary approach to religious, world, and social discussion.

For the People project page

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For the record: the logo was released in 2016, which is way out of my timeliness criteria but being a smallish organization it’s not something most of us knew about and I thought it would be beneficial to publish it because it treats the subject matter of religion in an interesting, unexpected way that could be of interest.

This will reveal my lack of knowledge about Christianity but I am not sure what the flowery icon in the old logo was meant to represent so I will not question its relevance other than saying that if the organization is devoted to communicating the principles of Christianity in a clear way to the general public maybe the logo shouldn’t include a hard-to-decipher icon that could exclude people for whom it is not immediately clear if it holds some meaning. Or maybe I’m reading way too much into it and all it really is is an exploded interrobang. I can also say that the icon was way, WAY, too big in relation to the wordmark, which wasn’t great either and had no reason for being all lowercase.

In contrast to the old logo that made me question what the logo was all about, the new one is clear, clever, and engaging: I immediately read it as a cross, then I see the twist of turning it into a plus and minus sign, and it makes me curious about what the organization is and does as, from the outset, its logo is telling me that there are positives and negatives related to Christianity. The execution is very simple and straightforward, with its bluntness making the organization come across as being neutral, accessible, and amicable to all sides of the conversation. As opposed to the old logo, I also like how they treat the name all the same with all the words at the same size, instead of highlighting only “Christianity”, making it more about the center’s efforts than the religion its efforts are for.

Most of the applications shown are renders but do a great job in exploring the principle of the identity and the mission of the organization, which is to openly discuss the positives and negatives of the religion and doing it in an engaging and contemporary way. Not being Christian, though, I can’t say if some of the writing takes things too lightly.

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Overall, I enjoyed both the bold and straightforward graphic approach and the at-least-on-the-surface openness of the organization to really engage in conversation without being, well, preachy.