Marian Bantjes:
Typographer, Illustrator and Designer.
Typography and Image 2018
In this graphic design assignment we selected a designer that interested us and then created a 5 spread book with a complete back and cover page. Originally I had a list of textile designers to choose from including Lucienne Day, Maija Isola and Zelina Brunschwig. Pretty Pictures by Marian Bantjes was recommended to me and I was instantly intrigued by her use of nontraditional materials in her work. I checked out this book as well as her novel I Wonder and I scoped her website at http://bantjes.com/. The spreads of the completed project focused on her use of white space in her work, the figure/ground relationship nurturing the significance and elegance of her designs.
below: mood boards to inspire the book design process.
below: different designs for the first spread, which became one of the most difficult to design. I wanted to be sure the first spread showed the soft and whimsical mood I was going for. A main struggle was figuring out a typeface that created the same mood. I decided on Bodoni 72 for the headlines and main body text, italicized Bodoni 72 for the quotes and Gill Sans MT for the captions. The italicized version of Bodoni 72 had a movement to it that gave the allusion of movement. The Gill Sans MT was denser and had less contrast within itself which made it high contrast against the Bododni 72.
below: different designs for the second spread which involved a lot of rearranging to make the white space seem fluid instead of awkward.
below: a few other versions of spreads that differed from the final versions. I experimented with image placement, tracking of words as well as font color.
below: the final version of the book.
