Blog2: Creativity & Innovation: Cobus Potgieter

For this blog post I decided to talk about one of my favorite musicians and designers Cobus Potgieter. He is one of my biggest influences as both a graphic designer and a drummer. Cobus is a 23-year-old South African who has become what you would consider famous due to a drum solo he posted on Youtube five years ago from a handheld camera. After this video became so popular, Cobus started recording and producing videos of him playing drums to a variety of different songs. Five years later, Cobus now travels all over the world playing on all different types of stages doing drum conferences, band music, solos etc. As of this moment Cobus Potgieter has more than 99 million views on his drum videos posted to Youtube.

Besides from his amazing talent, the main thing that sets Cobus apart from all other drummers is is passion for both drumming in general and his skills as a videographer. From the earliest videos he has posted all the way to his newest cover videos, he has done the majority of the filming setup, recording and video editing for his videos. This is because it just what he loves to do.

Cobus is known for “getting into” his drumming. This is partly because every single song he plays to is already a song that he loves and that is why he has never taken any song requests from fans.

The first step in Cobus’s design process is to just get to know the feeling of the song that he plans to drum too. This is very easy when you already love to listen to the song. After he knows the song well enough, he starts practicing a few ideas for how to make it his own while at the same time not overplaying it. On average, Cobus will do this with five to ten songs and then he will record them all in the same day as a series. He then proceeds to take all the film and audio and start editing the songs to his exact liking, all the while keeping his fans and followers informed on how its coming along. After a month or two of waiting for the new series, Cobus will finally post them all up on Youtube free for anyone to watch and enjoy.

Cobus’s design process is very unique in the way that he constantly keeps all his followers on both Facebook and Twitter in on what he is working on, while also keeping things a surprise. He is a great role model as both a great drummer and a person with a great personality. I hope that he continues to go through this process and work with his passion to create many more videos for everyone to enjoy.