Glorify
A rebrand pitch for Glorify, a Christian devotional app, built on the letters of its name. I went back to it this year and built the system and the app out properly.
Outcome
It didn't ship. The client felt the direction was too young for their audience, so I've thought a lot since about matching how expressive the work is to who it's for.
- Role
- Brand designer: concept sprints, typographic system, motion studies
- Team
- Led by a senior designer at High Spirit
- Year
- 2023, rebuilt in 2026
- Built with
- React, Remotion, Claude Code
The brief
Glorify is one of the biggest Christian devotional apps, and they wanted a rebrand that captured their core message of spiritual abundance. High Spirit pitched three directions and I worked on this one, Be. Become. Live.
The idea was to use the letters of the name as the structure for everything else, so every screen and poster felt full. I helped build the type system and made the brand expressions and motion studies for it.
The letters
Be.
Become.
Live.
Letter
Mood
Each letter of GLORIFY is a frame. At this weight and width the counters close up into hairlines, so the letters work as shapes you can put things in. The three moods come from the deck and set the colours.
Colour
App
Paper
F6F3EC
Card
FDFCF9
Ink
232835
Pink
EB6794
Butter
FFF5C7
Mint
D5F6E3
Blush
FFDFE0
Lilac
CFBCFE
Brand world
Purple
6847BC
Orange
F96149
Rose
EF6F92
Forest
2D443E
Slate
314045
Sage
A5DAC6
Lemon
FEE857
Parchment
FFF3BF
The app sits on a warm paper white with four pastels, one for each tab. The posters and merch use the louder brand colours.
Type
Natalie Smith
Cormorant Infant Regular, names and reading
Lord, grant me peace today
Cormorant Infant Light Italic, prayers and verses
Daily walk with God
Labels in Suisse Int’l, set here in Inter
Acumin Variable Concept Black, the wordmark
I found the typeface for the pitch, Acumin Variable Concept. The film draws each letter from its outline points and then sets the name as the wordmark.
Icons
All four tab icons are drawn on the same square. I wanted to show that, so the film takes them back to a plain block and builds each one out of it again.
Components
The screens
The pitch only got as far as three screens, sign in, Today and Listen. I rebuilt those and then designed the rest of the app around them using only what’s in the system. The hero card on each tab is that tab’s icon at full width, and every sleep story cover is a letter. It’s all working, so you can tap through it.
Brand world
Conclusion
I still really like this idea, so I came back to it to see if one typographic rule could hold up a whole product.
Building it in code meant every screen had to use the system for real, which is a much harder test than three mockups in a deck. The letters and icons did most of the work, and the cream and pastels kept it calm enough to read in.