Reflection 3

In today’s class, we watched an episode of Tedd talks where designer Marian Bantjes explains to us how she built her career through her individually into her projects. She made the “humble attempt of making a living doing something she loves”, which really inspired me because honestly I’m still hesitant of being in this field and getting to where I want to be. My biggest fear is working so hard and getting nowhere.

Her work used to follow strategy but now she follows her heart and her interests and ego, which isn’t a common thing to use but for her it seems to be working because her designs are interesting and unique. Whenever she works on a design she asks herself “does it bring joy? Does it bring wonder? Curiosity?” which I found pretty interesting. Usually when I design something I don’t think of those things I mostly think “is my message getting across? Are people getting my little references? Can they relate to it? Does it look visually appealing? Basically all the things we learned in our design classes up until now.

When she showed her example of the puzzle, how she took pieces of letterforms and created these tile units that she placed together to create this very interesting design that at first looked like scribbles to me but she used to create letters and words to make a pattern, it was puzzling but not impossible to read. I personally love designs like that when they have some sort of hidden message in them they make you think. It reminded me of an exhibit that I went to where you had to find the hidden message. In my first semester here in graphic design principles class we had to do something similar with a pattern we made which was challenging yet fun.

She also worked with weird materials that she was able to control for her designs. I know for a fact that it’s not easy to do that. I remember in my internship they gave me a bunch of fabrics and we had to come up with some designs for a client and it wasn’t easy especially when we had to use thing that I’ve never used before it was challenging yet fun.

Just when I thought that was crazy she said she worked with letterforms with sugar to create pieces that were really cool and they were all freehand! After watching that I tried to go home and play with sugar just to see what I could come up with and it wasn’t even close to what she showed my stuff looked like a bunch of doodles but it was relaxing and the texture was interesting as well. She basically is able to take things that we use in our everyday life and manipulates them for her benefit and comes up with these amazing designs which was super fascinating.

Another thing I loved that she showed was her valentine’s day cards, how she put her own spin on them which I really loved. It reminded me of something that I do for my friends on their birthdays. I create packages to put their gifts in as well as create individual cards based on them as a person and what they like which I enjoy doing because it pushes my designs and its fun! She also said that “inspiration is cross pollination”, which I never thought of but it’s true you never know how someone will perceive what you design and get inspired from it.