Image + Witty Tagline ≠ Good Design

I was surfing the 'net (as usual) when I came across this really great piece by Marian Bantjes. [Side note: if you don't know who she is, I suggest you at least check out what Wikipedia has to say about her by clicking on her name] Most, if not all, of her work is absolutely incredible, especially because she typically–and obsessively–creates them first by hand drawing them with extreme detail before recreating them in a vector-based program (which I can only assume would be Illustrator, but I suppose I could be wrong). I had the opportunity to meet her (and score some swag!) when she appeared as a guest speaker at BGSU, and she is just about as awesome as her work, especially because she doesn't even have a formal education in design; she's just that talented.

Anywho, I saw a piece that she created that explains what influences her and her work. I know that I am highly influenced by pop culture and maps (among other things), but wow, this is intense. You may want to click on it so you can see it larger to get the full effect.


As I'm reading her website, there are some Q & A that I find both entertaining and extremely insightful, one of those being:

What pisses you off most in the design world?
The mistaken belief that image+witty tagline = good design.

Also, I found a really great quote that she wrote in her "What I Say About Myself" section because it sounds just like me:

I do not know if I am lazy or driven. A little of both. While I tend to work every day, from morning to night (I’m frequently working past midnight), my days are relatively stress free. In the summer I tend to take a lot of breaks and sit in the sun or go for a walk. I spend a lot of time thinking. Just staring into space and thinking. Does this count as work? Sometimes. When I wake up in the morning with the perfect solution to a given problem, have I been working while I was sleeping? Perhaps.

(I've bolded the fragments that apply.)