- Eleftheria Parpis

What do Andy Warhol, Angelina Jolie, Muhammad Ali and Bono have to do with the Holy Bible?

For Dag Söderberg, a 55-year-old former agency CEO and graphic designer, they are the celebrity sizzle aimed at drawing readers to a modern-day, photo-packed version of the holy scriptures -- a juiced-up text meant to be more contemporary, accessible and inviting.

Pairing political and pop-culture images with New Testament passages, Söderberg created the Bible Illuminated, soft-cover, glossy-magazine-style books that pair images from today's world -- ranging from eye-catching shots of celebrities to jarring images of violence and poverty -- with excerpts from the Good News Translation of the Bible. (The Book of Mark, for example, sports images of Princess Diana and Mother Teresa juxtaposed with verses about helping others.)

The third title of its kind from Söderberg's Stockholm-based company Illuminated World, the new the Bible Illuminated: The Book New Testament (the first English-language edition in the series) was crafted as a coffee-table book meant to inspire more casual reading of a piece of literature that is often veiled in formality and buried on a bookshelf.

"I'm not very religious myself," explains Söderberg, who was raised Lutheran and, with a bishop grandfather, attended mass at the Dom of Linkoping seated in the family's own private pew. "For a long time, when I was young, I hated it in a way," he says of the good book. But as an adult, he began to contemplate the impact it has had on society, how people interact with it, and what a blockbuster best-seller it is. With more than 500 million copies sold worldwide each year, he notes, its sales dwarf those of The Da Vinci Code and the Harry Potter series.

"You don't have to be religious to read the Bible," says Söderberg, who began the project as a hobby in 2003, five years after selling his agency, Söderbergs, to Euro RSCG. "Our heritage comes from that book -- ethics, morals, even government laws -- so it does affect us all," he says. "It's our history. For that reason, I want to make it more accessible."

Realizing there could be a market for a souped-up version of the scriptures, Söderberg formed Illuminated World. With a small team of graphic designers -- including his wife, Carina; art director Lars Liljendahl; and photo researchers Mia Bengtsson-Plynning and Anicka Jonsson -- Söderberg in 2007 produced the first of his revamps, The Illuminated Bible: The Book, including both the Old and New Testaments. To generate interest, the team took volumes to trendy hotels and fashion stores and organized an exhibit showcasing the passage-and-picture pairings outside the Royal Dramatic Theatre.

This spring, Illuminated World will introduce its version of the Old Testament stateside and with it, plans for exhibitions in New York and Los Angeles. The goal is to introduce editions in other markets worldwide.

So, what began as a creative exercise after years in the agency trenches has turned into a second career for the designer.

"Being in advertising, my whole life has always been a struggle to do something new," says Söderberg, who still has a hand in the ad business through consulting and his site.

mypitch.com, which opens up client briefs to the public. Now, he says, "modern people are talking about the Bible. That's communication, making people talk about things they hadn't thought about before. If I can be of any help in making that discussion happen, I love it."