Designing a Temple Brand: Logo, Fortune Slips, and the Pilgrimage Experience

Challenge

Like many traditional temples, Yong An Sheng An Gong faced the challenge of attracting younger visitors and revitalizing the worship experience. The existing process was dignified but made it hard for modern visitors to grasp its cultural meaning or find it engaging, and shorter visit times were limiting growth in donations. The temple wanted to introduce approachable, innovative elements without compromising its core religious values.

Goal

The goal was to give Sheng An Gong's brand identity, fortune slips, and worship experience more interactivity and a more contemporary feel, building visitors' sense of participation and belonging, and in turn growing the temple's reach and revenue, all while staying true to its core religious values so younger generations could understand and connect with temple culture.

Approach

1. Reworked Sheng An Gong's brand identity, unifying the logo and visual language to serve as the foundation for the fortune slip and on-site fixture designs that followed.
2. Collaborated with designer Sung Chen-chieh to create a water-activated fortune slip, where the text only appears when wet, using water from the local Yulong Spring, adding a moment of interaction and surprise when visitors draw a slip for guidance.
3. Redesigned the worship process signage, the fortune slip cabinet, the fortune slip stand, and the donation box, so first-time visitors could clearly follow the steps of worship.

Outcome

The water-activated fortune slip and the improved worship process were completed and installed on schedule. The fortune slip stand, signage, and cabinet were all finished under the new identity, giving Sheng An Gong a worship experience that draws in younger visitors while staying rooted in its core beliefs.