Marian Bantjes

Marian Bantjes is one of the most creative designers I have heard about to this day. Bantjes is so creative that most of her colleagues don’t even see her as a designer, but more of an illustrator. Her first job was a typesetter for an illustration book company, after that she started working at Digitopolis where she felt restricted and couldn’t sell her creativity to clients. Later in her life she was able to build a house of her own in Bowen Island where she now lives. Her house is a workspace for her where she can use sleep as her creative process and is no longer “a waste of time” as she used to call it. Before Bantjes started to work on graphic designs, she would avidly post on her blog at the time called Speak Up! What she wrote in her articles was nothing compared to what others were writing, she wrote about deconstructing the alphabet, the difference between santa and a genome, and she would also have high level discussions with great designers of the time. Bantjes stressed how important it is for her to start her creative process by sketching with pencil and paper and not jumping directly to the computer because most of the time her end results would be considered garbage. It is very difficult to pour out ideas on a computer that has restrictions unlike pencil and paper where the pencil can move freely. Bantjes is obsessed with patterns and finds pleasure in creating them; she said that a good pattern works well because it integrates well with the pattern next to it. Bnatjes was always creating something different and was always ahead of her time, but when she turned forty she completely shifted style. She started working on Valentine’s Day cards with a new theme every year. Having watched this documentary allowed me to expand my creative process, work against what is expected, and resist the autopilot design.