What place does design have in gospel ministry?

I went through uni with a great student group called FEVA (Fellowship for Evangelism to the Visual Arts) and this was a constant topic for designers and artists. They loved Jesus and they loved good design and making beautiful things. So students were always wrestling with the question, “Can we glorify Jesus and do mission to the world with art?”
This was always answered carefully and well. And it’s been something I’ve had to think through again recently.

The gospel is a spoken message. You can’t proclaim Jesus without words. No matter how beautiful something is, people are blind to the glory of Jesus without the Holy Spirit helping them hear/read human words as the very words of God (1Thess 2).
What’s more, you don’t design to make the gospel attractive, because the gospel is attractive already. Trying to make the content of the gospel more attractive will only result in diminishing the glory of the gospel.
But the gospel is a communicated thing. It’s meant to be communicated. And all communication is designed. That’s a key idea; all communication is designed. Communication is the clothes which adorn a message and make paying attention to it attractive. We design to adorn our communication of the gospel. We don’t want to make the gospel more attractive, but rather, we want to make our communication of it as attractive as possible.