2025
Closing Talk: Design Matters 25 Reflections
Tey Bannerman & Rahul Lindberg Sen, Co-Hosts
In this talk, I’ll share a personal reflection on getting creatively stuck, and how easy it is to lose touch with the reasons we create in the first place. This talk is for anyone who’s felt stuck, tired, or quietly disconnected from their own work - an invitation to make mistakes, to start over, and to trust the deeper ebbs and flows of creative life.
I’m Kot Bonkers, a self-taught illustrator working primarily with ink, pencil, and paper, and recently expanding into ceramics and clay work. My visual language is often childlike and raw — I try not to overthink it, finding ways to play around my lack of technical knowledge through more minimal and direct forms of self-expression. I enjoy capturing the imperfect, messy beauty of human experience and treat illustration as a form of visual diary — a way to process internal landscapes and build bridges to the outside world. My work explores themes of transparency, human rights, self-discovery, humour, and resilience. Lately, I’ve been especially focused on collaborative projects, becoming more curious about how self-expression can expand and transform through shared ideas. Through my work, I aim to foster community, invite dialogue, create spaces for shared reflection, and offer myself an outlet to process sadness, joy, and whatever else life brings.
