Author: Dan Farrell and Keith Williams
Submitted: November 02, 2018
Tell us a little about yourself. Hello, Dan and Keith here. We had the privilege of developing this Bible concept at Tyndale House Publishers. Dan has a background in mechanical engineering and graphic design. Keith has an advanced degree in Biblical studies. We love the Bible and believe God speaks powerfully and personally to his creation through its pages, and we have worked together on multiple Bibles over the last ten years.
What was your motivation behind this project? Study Bibles are great, but because the Bible is such a long book (actually a library of 66 books!) they present a lot of design challenges. They tend to be big and bulky, and the excellent material they contain often has to be packed on the page in tiny, hard-to-read type. And even at that, the space is limited and we can’t put all the helpful content in that we’d like to.
On the flip side, digital Bibles on your phone are convenient and portable, yet we continue to hear people say they prefer reading God's word from a printed page. They remember better what they've read, and there's something irreplaceably valuable about the form of a well-made printed book.
Filament is an attempt to bring the strengths of a physical book together with the powerful capabilities of mobile phones and tablets in order to create a better Bible experience than either could provide on its own. You get a beautifully simple Bible for when you just want to focus on God’s Word, and you get more study, devotional, and visual material through the app than you could get in a printed study Bible. It’s the best of both worlds.
What do you hope folks will gain from this project? We hope people will feel like they finally have a Bible that will do everything they want it to. We hope they will love the simplicity of the printed Bible when they just want to focus on God’s Word. And we hope they will love using the Filament app when they have a question or want to dig deeper. Ultimately, we hope God will use our efforts on this project to help many people engage more deeply with his word.
