Intricate beauty by design

Marian Bantjes, a designer, typographer, writer and illustrator based on a small island off the west coast of Canada and a member of Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI), explains in this 2010 TED talk why she does what she does.

Just as she is inspired by books, magazines, conversations and films, she believes that putting interesting, unusual and intriguing visual work into the mass media seeds the imagination of the public. You never know who will take something from it and turn it into something else, because inspiration cross-pollinates: a piece of hers may inspire a playwright, a novelist or a scientist, who may in turn inspire a doctor, a philanthropist or a babysitter.

That effect can’t be quantified, tracked or measured, and society tends to undervalue what it can’t measure. Bantjes argues that a rich society needs these seeds from all directions and disciplines. That is why she spends so much time and effort on her work, and why she works in the commercial, public sphere rather than the private sphere of fine art: she wants as many people as possible to see it and take something from it.