World-renowned designer, illustrator and typographer Marian Bantjes started working in the field of visual communication in 1983, and subsequently worked for 10 years as a book typesetter (that is her education).
From 1993 to 2002 she owned and ran a design firm with a partner, with 2 to 12 staff members, creating material for a wide range of corporate, education and arts – organizations (that is her experience).
Since 2003 she has crossed the boundaries between design, illustration and typography and currently works in this zone, mostly for other designers (that is her experiment). she is also in her 4th year on the british columbia board of the society of graphic – designers of Canada (GDC/BC), writes about design for the design website speak up, and teaches typography through Emily Carr Institute in Vancouver.
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Marian Bantjes spoke at the recent Design Matters Live event presented by Adobe and the AIGA.
Here Marian shared her love for the design community and the importance of staying connected, even while working from her idyllic rural home studio. She spoke about her transition from a more traditional design career path to a much more personally fulfilling mix of work. Marian’s insights in this portrait are important for anyone who cares passionately about design and respects the craft of the artist.
In graphic design, Marian Bantjes says, throwing your individuality into a project is heresy. However at the Feb 2010 @ TEDTalks -( see the video and much more by hitting the Continue button below ) … Marian explained how she built her career doing just that, bringing her signature delicate illustrations to storefronts, valentines and even genetic diagrams.
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“ME” at TED! – posted 22 December 2009 prior to speaking ……
I will be speaking at the TED conference in Long Beach, California; Feb 9–13, 2010.
I’m on on Friday the 12th, a few hours after Bill Gates and about an hour before Sarah Silverman! Of course, I’m surrounded on all sides by some of the biggest brains in a variety of disciplines. Scientists, behaviourists, chefs, singers (David Byrne! Andrew Bird!), writers, physicians, philosophers, entrepreneurs, activists, architects, mathematicians, and me! And more!
I’ll be immediately preceded by Temple Grandin, an autism activist, and followed by Denis Dutton, who wrote the book The Art Instinct which has been sitting on my pile of unread books for half a year. And I’m really looking forward to hearing Sir Ken Robinson speak on Saturday
TED Talks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world’s leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes.
Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes, Pattie Maes on the “Sixth Sense” wearable tech, and “Lost” producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery.
TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Watch a highlight reel of the Top 10 TEDTalks … here
At Pecha Kucha Vancouver, Marian Bantjes presented a wonderful, exhilarating array of art pieces inspired by her dentist, cake and love gone right and wrong.
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Marian Bantjes was born in 1963 and is a Canadian designer, artist, illustrator, typographer and writer
Bantjes’ highly personal, obsessive and sometimes strange graphic work has brought her international recognition and fame as a world-class visual designer. Bantjes is known for her detailed and lovingly precise vector art, obsessive hand work, patterning and highly ornamental style.
Stefan Sagmeister calls Bantjes “one of the most innovative typographers working today,” and Noreen Morioka calls Bantjes “the Doyald Young of her generation.” In 2005 Bantjes was named one of 25 up-and-coming Designers to Watch (STEP Magazine, January 2005).
Bantjes’ clients include Pentagram, Stefan Sagmeister, Saks Fifth Avenue, Bruce Mau Design, Young & Rubicam Chicago, Anni Kuan, Houghton Mifflin, Print Magazine, Wallpaper* , WIRED, The Guardian (UK), The New York Times, among others. She has also worked on design materials for AIGA, TypeCon 2007, and the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada (GDC).
Her work has been featured in STEP, étapes (Paris), Azure, Matrix (Quebec) Tupigrafia (Brazil) and Print, Fontshop’s Font 004, and Eye magazine (#58). She also has a book coming out with Princeton Architectural Press in the fall of 2008. Bantjes has been honored with numerous awards and her work is now part of the permanent collection at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.
Marian Bantjes has been writing quirky, sometimes feisty articles for the Design Industry for quite some time now.
She likes to look at things from different perspectives — not always popular, not always right, and not even always smart, but sometimes all of the above.
She describes herself as a lapsed Graphic Designer and current Graphic Artist, although design is still a daily part of her life and some of her best work certainly falls under that category.
“What I say about myself -“
I have a lot of things to say about myself. – posted 08 February 2006 – Here are a few of them.
I’m Canadian, and I love being Canadian. I love being self-deprecating even though Americans see it as a sign of weakness. I love being politically left of center (actually, quite far left, if you must know). I love being honest, and nice and polite and caring and kind. (Although sometimes I really do wish I could be a total bitch without feeling guilty about it.) I’m amused by my own respect for authority and rule-following instincts.
I’m also from Saskatchewan, the prairies, and I’m really proud of that too. I love the prairies: the flatness, the big sky, the clouds, the incredible summers and the brutal winters. But I don’t want to live there any more.
Now I live on an island near Vancouver, BC. That’s on the west coast of Canada, across from Japan. This coast is rich and lush and green all year ‘round. It seldom snows here. We even have palm-tree-like-things. We have beaches and mountains and giant trees. It’s absolutely incredible and I’m very, very lucky to live here.
I have a very big virtual life. In fact, most of my life these days seems to exist in the ether of the internet. I’m not that happy about this, but … I live on an island on the west coast of Canada, so, uh …
I do not know if I am lazy or driven. A little of both. While I tend to work every day, from morning to night (I’m frequently working past midnight), my days are relatively stress free. In the summer I tend to take a lot of breaks and sit in the sun or go for a walk. I spend a lot of time thinking. Just staring into space and thinking. Does this count as work? Sometimes. When I wake up in the morning with the perfect solution to a given problem, have I been working while I was sleeping? Perhaps.
These days I call myself a lapsed Graphic Designer. This is largely untrue, but in my struggle to redefine myself it’s helpful to cast off the old me in the search of the new.
I have a ton of experience in typesetting and design, but it wasn’t until I started doing this other thing in 2004 that I began to find the thing that is me in the act of what I do. Does that make sense?
I am impatient; I’m always about 6 steps ahead of myself, and I get frustrated that it takes me so long to reach where I feel I already am. But I have to remind myself I’ve made a huge amount of progress in the few years that I’ve been doing what I’m doing.
Am I successful? Yes. In terms of how I feel about what I make and why I do it. In terms of the acclaim and attention I feel far more worthwhile than I did when I ran a graphic design firm. Am I rich? No.
I often get mail from people and students asking me “What are your influences; where do your ideas come from.” I will answer that now: “Everything.” Conversations, things I read, things I see around me, books, magazines, old stuff, new stuff, art design, craft, film, music and garbage. I can be inspired at any moment by the strangest things. I am seldom bored. I have more ideas than I will ever be able to produce in my lifetime—some of them are even good ideas.
I’m well travelled. That’s what I did in my 20s when I should have been getting an education. Actually, I’m so so glad I travelled then, as the world is very different now. Lately I have been travelling a lot to speak about my work. It’s good to get out in the world again.
I love to think and write and talk. I love hanging out with smart, interesting people. I hate sports, I love music, I hate theatre, I love movies, I hate Disney, I love the Bothers Quay, I hate research, I love making things … I could go on like this, but it’s 1 am and I’m now tired
I took the year of 2009 off to work on a book … this then overflowed into 2010 by a few months. As a result, my output for the past 16 months is slim (but not nonexistent). The book, however, when it is released in the fall of 2010, will prove that I have not just been sitting around on my ass looking at the view.
Marian on herself:
I have a very big virtual life. In fact, most of my life these days seems to exist in the ether of the internet. I’m not that happy about this, but … I live on an island on the west coast of Canada, so, uh …
I do not know if I am lazy or driven. A little of both. While I tend to work every day, from morning to night (I’m frequently working past midnight), my days are relatively stress free. In the summer I tend to take a lot of breaks and sit in the sun or go for a walk. I spend a lot of time thinking. Just staring into space and thinking. Does this count as work? Sometimes. When I wake up in the morning with the perfect solution to a given problem, have I been working while I was sleeping? Perhaps.
These days I call myself a lapsed Graphic Designer. This is largely untrue, but in my struggle to redefine myself it’s helpful to cast off the old me in the search of the new.
I have a ton of experience in typesetting and design, but it wasn’t until I started doing this other thing in 2004 that I began to find the thing that is me in the act of what I do. Does that make sense?
I am impatient; I’m always about 6 steps ahead of myself, and I get frustrated that it takes me so long to reach where I feel I already am. But I have to remind myself I’ve made a huge amount of progress in the few years that I’ve been doing what I’m doing
oops
Pyramyd Editions in France (who also publish the design mag étapes) published Marian’s designs as part of a series of small books called “design&designer”.
Valentine’s Day Project
For 3 years now I’ve adopted Valentine’s Day as my time to make contact with people. This year I got the crazy idea to draw each one by hand. I liked the idea that each person would get something unique, with their name on it, but that there would be a larger whole that they would also be part of. It did require that I brutally slash my mailing list, but I made sure that everyone on the list knows me (although I haven’t met them all): most of the people are somewhere between friendly and friend to me. I intended to do 125, but as I remembered people I’d left out, it grew to 150. I had to cap it there: I was exhausted, out of time, and my drawing hand (which is insured for five million dollars) was nearly broken. Now that they are all done and sent, I have already thought of a few people who should have got one but didn’t, and if you are one of those people, I truly do apologize.
They are numbered, and already much has been made of what number people are on the list. Not to burst the bubbles of those with low numbers, but the order was complex and not tied to relative affection. Those living further away went out first (#1 is for Min Wang, in China), those living closer went out last. Additional sorting was alphabetical by company name. There were a few stragglers, and there were a few who I held back because I hadn’t drawn a heart that felt quite right for them yet.
And of course there’s always the worry of “her valentine is nicer than my valentine.” Well. Is it really? I don’t think so.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
