In today’s class, we have viewed Marian Bantjes’s talks for TED, and I think this speech is impressive and enlightening to people who are going to work in the visual fields, including graphic design and industrial design. In her speech, Marian Bantjes shows the power of pursuing a more personal approach to her design through a surprise visual structure that invokes the curiosity of audiences.

Marian Bantjes is one of the famous graphic designers around the world. The main factor for her success in the graphic design field is to have a strong expression of personal style. During her early work as graphic design, Bantjes creates her works by following the strategy precisely which is a general pattern of the most graphic designers do. But now, she describes herself as a graphic artist. “Now my work follows my heart and interests with the guidance of ego,” Marian Bantjes said in TED Talks.

To achieve her goal, Bantjes keeps exploring different methods to her work. Besides her style of intricate systems and patterns, Marian Bantjes also interests using unusual materials for her design. For example, she put sugar on the white surface and draws words with her free hand, which is inspired by Stefan Sagmeister’s works. Also, she uses pasta to craft into baroque borders and places real plants for decorations. Currently, she is working on a big project which is making hundreds of postcard for Valentine’s Day. In last year, Bantjes hand drew hundreds of heart, and each of them is individual and unique. But this time, she uses old Christmas cards that collect from her friends to make hearts through the technology of laser cut.

Based on Bantjes’s speech about her transformative personal story of her designs, I get a lot of inspiration. For instance, we should not put the limitations on ourselves. I think every worker in the visual design field has many great and creative ideas of design; however, they also need to adopt clients’ demands and requirements, and table-based grids in the real world. Nevertheless, we still employ the innovative approaches to our works to accomplish a balance of personal style and clients’ demands like Marian Bantjes as well. Finally, our works can get everybody approval.

Overall, I do enjoy Marian Bantjes’s talks in TED; she helps me by encouraged me to develop a personal style to my work. Also, it is a good experiment by using different materials to extend us a new thinking on creativity.