Marian Bantjes: I Wonder

Softcover | 16 x 3.81 x 24.26 cm | 224 pp

Monacelli Press | 2018 | 9781580935197 

From typographic illustrator Marian Bantjes, I Wonder offers new ways of thinking about art, design, beauty, and popular culture through elaborately crafted word pictures.

Whether intricately hand-drawn or using computer illustration software, Bantjes's work crosses the boundaries of time, style, and technology. There is, however, another side to Bantjes's visual work: her thoughtful treatises on art, design, beauty, and popular culture that add a deeper dimension to the decorative nature of her best-known work.

These reflections cover the cult of Santa, road-side advertising, photography and memory, the alphabet's letterforms, heraldry, and stars. Bantjes's writing style ranges from the playful to the confrontational, but it is always imbued with perspicacity, insight, and a sense of fun.

Intended to inspire creatives of any persuasion, this is more than a collection of ideas: Bantjes has meticulously illustrated every page of the book in her inimitable style to create an accessible work of art that is far greater than the sum of its parts.

Quirky, poignant, astute, funny - this beautiful book presents a compelling collection of observations on visual culture and design. In Stefan Sagmeister's telling words, Bantjes's work is his "favorite example of beauty facilitating the communication of meaning."