When I was studying graphic design at Carnegie-Mellon in the late sixties, it was a breath of fresh air for me to discover the work of InterVarsity Press whose design was in step with the radical graphics of that time. Already committed to Christ, I determined to help present God’s truth with such relevance and passion.

I remember, however, the long string of book cover rejections in my early years at Tyndale. I had to balance my desire to be relevant with the culture of CBA at that time. Vogue in the 1970s meant quirky new typefaces with shadows and very tight letter spacing, posterized photos, and closely-cropped images. I remember being told that it was disrespectful to crop off the top of someone’s head!

Thirty-five years later I am amazed at the 12-point type titles approved on some covers. My training had prepared me for communicating the main thrust of the text as faithfully as possible. Today, post-modern thinking has encouraged irrational, humorous, and irreverent solutions to arrest the book buyer’s attention. Still, the basic principles of visual communication remain: simplicity, contrast, the element of surprise, and unity of text and image—to name a few.

I consider one of my greatest contributions to the industry to be the added care and embellishment of book interiors in unity with the approved cover. Like the increased numbers of sidebars that have crept into books, I recognized the need to visually entertain readers who were spending more time watching television. The pendulum has swung and today we are creating more conservative, standardized layouts with fewer “bells and whistles.”

Bible design has continued to be my greatest love; I desire to find new ways to communicate its truths to each new generation. I am personally proud of Tyndale’s history of innovation beginning with the conversational style of The Living Bible. Then there was The Book, whose one-column format was designed not to look like a Bible. The One Year Bible dared to rearrange the text so that people could read through the whole Bible in a year without getting bogged down in Leviticus.

In response to my own need to spend more time in the Bible, I began creating word pictures of familiar texts. As illustrated in Doorposts, I tried to make the words look like what they mean helping me, a visual learner, to see the Word.

Inspired by the book Purple Cow, I recently made a list of success stories in our industry from the last 50 years and discovered some common threads: maintaining a laser-like focus to communicate the gospel, removing the barriers to faith by making it plain and simple, and visualizing what has only been verbal communication in the past.

I look forward to seeing what “purple cows” are waiting around the bend!

Timothy R. Botts has designed more than 600 books at Tyndale House Publishers since 1972 where he is currently senior art director.