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Marian Bantjes
Typographer, Illustrator and Designer.
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“...my peonies were wilting and sighing,
and I decided to immortalize them, on a whim, one sunny afternoon.�
Left to right: Flower Alphabet, 2007 Marian Bantjes Sorrow 2013, Marian Bantjes, Nothing Major Journal
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Inspiration and Connection
B
antjes is a Canadian designer born March 23, 1963. She started as a traditional typesetter in 1983 and learned the technical craft of creating letter forms. By 1993 she co-owned Digitopolis, but by 2003 she decided to switch her focus and became a freelance designer. She is best known for her knew work which is a unique blend of typography, illustration and non traditional materials. Bantjes strives to create connections between material and text, making
her work less about the ideal of being beautiful for the sake of beauty. Bantjes lets the world around her and its materiality inspire her work. Her first flower piece was created when she saw peonies shedding their petals. In the final version for Oprah Magazine, the idea was edited to create more colors, design qualities and a clearer legibility than her first piece. Another piece using flower petals was The Woman on Top for Texas Monthly. The two pieces are drastically different colors and the mood is different in each as well. Bantjes explains the problems with the first version were that it was too pretty, illegible and was not giving the correct feeling the client was looking for. The second was created with rose petals and full roses to create a unified color field and enhance its legibility.
Clockwise from top middle: I Want it All, 2006, Marian Bantjes I Want it All, 2006, Marian Bantjes Sorrow 2013, Marian Bantjes Sorrow 2013, Marian Bantjes The Woman on Top, 2007, Marian Bantjes The Woman on Top, 2007, Marian Bantjes
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Sorrow was created in the same way as I Want it All. The piece was for the Chicago Design Museum (ChiDM). Bantjes collected the flowers from a local store the same day she made it “not putting any advance thought into it”. She thought of the ‘sorrow’ after thinking about how the flowers would be on display for weeks and would wilt and deteriorate.
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“Marian’s work might be my favorite example of beauty facilitating the communication of meaning.” - Stefan Sagmeister 6
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“The one where I tried to make it conform was the least successful.”
B
antjes’ piece Indestructible was created from the spontaneous practice of her process. She recounts that she played with her food as a child and when calling on that process she played and created this piece. After documenting it she accidentally destroyed it, creating a blown apart piece of work that was not in fact indestructible.
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From previous page, Sagmeister Sugar, 2007 Marian Bantjes From left to right: Sugar, 2007, Marian Bantjes Sugar, 2007, Marian Bantjes Indestructable, 2006, Marian Bantjes Indestructable, 2006, Marian Bantjes Sagmeister Sugar, 2007, Marian Bantjes
Indestructable
Continuing from Indestructible, she worked with the graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister. She created work from the prompt, “If I want to explore a new direction professionally, it is helpful to try it out for myself first.� She experimented with many sizes and colors of sugar but the fine sugar was the most attractive in its simplicity.
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Intention and Materials C
oupled with Bantjes’ spontaneous process is her intent. Her work is nurtured by the meaning, such as her Honor series. Bantjes created intention on honoring the forms of the pasta and focused on the relationship they had to each other. Within this project her forms echo the floral, illuminated style she works with. Her initial inspiration for this project was honoring individuals in obituaries, as her mother’s was plain and had no emotion or value to it.
From left to right: Honor, 2012 Marian Bantjes Honor, 2012 Marian Bantjes The Sun,The Moon,The Stars, 2012, Marian Bantjes The Sun,The Moon,The Stars, 2012 Marian Bantjes
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“Sometimes perfection is in the intent.�
Bantjes has another series The Sun the Moon and the Stars where the ornamentation is dependent on jewelry she saw at the Griffith Observatory. She uses the space themed brooches, earrings, and bracelets to tell a story about space. In this instance, like many other in her work, Bantjes was first inspired by the material and created something new from what she derived from it. As she progresses she continues to be inspired by the material first.
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Sources “About.” Marian Bantjes. Accessed March 27, 2018. http://bantjes.com/about/. Bantjes, Marian. I Wonder. S.l.: Monacelli Press, 2010 Bantjes, Marian. Pretty Pictures. Farnborough: Thames & Hudson, 2013. Gage, Mark Foster. “Etiologies of Beauty: Architecture and the New Physics of Appearances.” Perspecta 40 (2008): 9095. http://www.jstor.org/ stable/40482284. “I Want it All.” Marian Bantjes. Accessed March 27, 2018. http://bantjes.com/ about/. “Questions Answered.” Marian Bantjes. Accessed March 27, 2018. http:// bantjes.com/about/. “Sorrow.” Marian Bantjes. Accessed March 27, 2018. http://bantjes.com/about/.
Designed and written by Shamira Tanguay Composed in Bodoni 72 designed in 1790 by Giambattista Bodoni and Gill Sans MT desinged in 1928 by Eric Gill opyright © 2018 Shamira Tanguay p Portland, Maine, Maine College of Art