The Rational Ornamentalist: Marian Bantjes
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Indestructible (before), 2006
Indestructible (after), 2006
“Everyth I do, I do
for
love.
hing
arian Bantjes has no issue with incorporating what is personal into what is commercial to create new and innovative typography. Bantjes, born in 1963, is a designer, typographer, illustrator, and writer. She spent the first half of her career as a typesetter and continued on that path for ten years. In that time, she became a well-known graphic designer.
She left the firm to pursue her
own interests and style of work that she had become internationally recognized for. She left the field of book typography to join the Canadian design studio Digitopolis in 1994, where she flourished as a graphic designer there until 2003. In the years since, she has worked for Pentagram, Stefan Sagmeister, AIGA, The Guardian and The New York Times, among others. Describing herself as a
.’’
Typecon Poster, 2007
“graphic artist,” she develops intricate and completely customized type for her clients. Back when Marian Bantjes was a graphic and type designer, she claimed that her work was “clean, simple, and unimaginative…her book training was bookish.”
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Valentines, 2005
Valentines, 2006
Valentines, 2010
Valentines, 2011
Valentines, 2014
Valentines, 2012 Valentines, 2013
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Valentines since 2005
On a flight into New York in 2005, Marian Bantjes had an epiphany:
“Everything I do, I do for love.” Money wasn’t her primary motivation to make work, anymore. She no longer kept track of the time it took her to make anything, she merely enjoyed what she was creating. She turned this phrase into an illustration (see Fig. 5) to send to people on a day that they don’t typically receive mail (as opposed to every other holiday): Valentine’s Day. She has continued this every year since.
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Want It!
Saks 5th Avenue
After Michael Bierut had designed turning words into objects, or an the new Saks Fifth Avenue
abstract expression of an adjective.
identity, he hired Bantjes to work
By customizing the ascenders
on the season’s campaign entitled
and descenders of a customized
“Want It!” Here, she was given
typeface she successfully designed
license to combine illustration
the 18 trend items of the season with
and typography; quite literally
flourishing lines and simple forms.
Saks Season Campaign, 2007
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The Music Room, 2011
Fig. 13. Varoom: Style, 2014
Fig. 12. Seduction Poster, 2006
& other commercial work
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“Am I
successful? Ye In terms
of how I
feel ab
what I make
why I do it.”
es.
bout and
”
Varoom: Relationships 2012
antjes found,
Her decorative influences run the
embraced, and reveled in the
gamut from Middle Eastern to
Baroque style. Now, she makes
African to Asian, and she can shift
exactingly complex custom
from interpreting or mimicking
lettering that has made her into
one to another and combining a
a kind of “Michelangelo for the
few with ease. “It’s really due to
21st century’s decorative lettering
whim and what I’m interested in
renaissance.”
exploring or experimenting with
Her style emerged in 1996. But its
at that time,” she says about her
origins, she states, are a bit of a
mannerisms, emphasizing that it is
mystery, even to her. “There’s
not “the more detailed the better,”
nothing in my life or the life of
usually it’s whatever is the more
my family that was in the least
challenging. “I’m particularly fond
bit Baroque or patterned or
of systems, I’m interested in using
ornamented. I can find in my
new techniques.”
travel to exotic countries in my 20s, India, Thailand, Italy, Spain, Bali, and Africa, that are the possible seeds of my interest in intense decoration.” Although she opened her own design firm, specializing in book design in 1994, she closed shop in 2003 to begin experimenting on her own.
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Fortune: Money Alphabet 2013
The National: Orpheum 2011
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Designed and written by Stephanie Henry Bantjes, Marian. Marian Bantjes - Pretty Pictures. London: Thames & Hudson, 2013. http://bantjes.com/work/category/portfolio/.
Composed in Athelas and Athelas Bold typefaces Designed by Veronika Burian and Jose Scaglione in 2008 Printed onto Hammermill 60# text. Copyright Š 2017 Stephanie Henry, Portland, Maine Maine College of Art
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