I’ve decided to achieve enlightenment

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Kevin Angelus is a designer from Chennai, India, working with identity, graphic design and communication, as well as localised Indian design of the present day. His interests include illegally pirating tv shows, eating mutta dosa, and on occasion putting garbage words into a sequence to call it writing.

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For those of you living in the basement of a rock—there’s a lot going on right now. We’ve just been dealing with all the varying effects of a worldwide pandemic, parts of the world are dealing with war—and there are plenty of absolute fucking clowns, elected in power and otherwise, that have devoted themselves to figuring out how exactly they can contribute do doing their part in making the world a generally shittier place to exist in.

In times like these, finding god, religion, spirituality and enlightenment—just generally metaphysically glowing—seems like a good solution to a lot of people—looking within to become better, and maybe avoid looking outward at the flaming garbage dump we call reality. Don’t get me wrong—if it works for you and makes you a better person in some mysterious way? By all means continue on your magic quest for truth. Overwhelmingly, however, spirituality has become a great branding exercise, or to put this more accurately, my dream branding project—and by no means is this a recent phenomenon.

Since the pre-colonial era of history, religion has been a great way to build a cult of personality – in some cases even an actual cult. Somewhere in Madurai, in the early 1600’s, a random Italian nobleman, Roberto de Nobili (which is probably the equivalent of a designer naming their offspring Bob Designernath) decided the best way to “Spread the Word of Christ our Lord” was to rebrand Christianity as a cousin of the generally acceptable spiritual practices of Hinduism, dressing as a sanyasi, inventing his own caste system, and refusing to acknowledge those he deemed of an inferior caste, including his superior (also Christian) missionaries at the mission he worked with (which, by the way, is a great power move, and I’m taking down notes). By the spectacularly LSD dropping, bell-bottom wearing eighties, Osho ( best known for starring in the 2018 Netflix Doc “ Wild Wild Country” about his involvement in a̶l̶l̶e̶g̶e̶d̶ crimes in starting a Religious Intent Community in the American Midwest), and his secretary Ma Anand Sheela ( best known for saying “Tough Titties” on the aforementioned show), had started the Rajneeshi Ashram–which, despite involvement in a bioterror attack, arson, voting and immigration fraud, and straight up attempted murder, had a thriving local community (at the time at least) of believers. In more recent times, MSG–Gurmeet Ram ”Messenger of God” Rahim Singh Insan, a Religious Leader™ (who was prosecuted for multiple illegal activities including rape and accused murder and perhaps most strangely – castrating his followers) launched his own cinematic universe of MSG movies about the (surprise, surprise) Messenger Of God–A godman (even more surprisingly, wow) based on himself, and the Save Soil Campaign run by yet another Spiritual Icon, Sadhguru – who advertises environmental protection across the globe (seriously, I saw one in Canada, in a town with probably 10 Indian People total in it) while riding around the world in his Jeep, going on 100 day motorbike rallies and, most astoundingly, selling “Thaai Mann - Consecrated Bhoomi” which is essentially just a bag of blessed dirt, are both fascinating examples of the use cases of what is again, in my opinion, religion as the wildest branding project ever not uploaded to a portfolio.

Like any iconic branding project, building a cult of personality requires multiple elements– a memorable identifier ( usually the lead godman in question, on occasion a side minion who can take the blame for your crimes or drop snazzy one-liners in court), recognizable elements like typography ( you’re going to need a way to make your Words of Wisdom feel the right way, but a mystic tone of voice and some chanting will probably do the trick in a pinch), iconography and colours (robes, funny hats with crosses on them, and a certain colour that rhymes with saffron) and distinct messaging (Isn’t this just the point of any religion?). Now all criticism aside, we do live in very uncertain times, and life under capitalism is enough to make anyone turn to religion, so they do make a valid point. I’m sold. I’m already a designer who works with brands, so growing a beard and investing in some robes might make a worthwhile retirement plan.