One of the world’s most influential designers, Bruce Mau has evolved from an innovative graphic designer to a world-class conceptualist. He has produced books and museum shows, collaborated with star architects and rethought and revamped education. Mau’s ultimate goal for his empire, ‘Bruce Mau Design’, is to use design to change the world (Corburn 2010).

Bruce Mau was born in Canada on 25 October 1959 and grew up in Sudbury, Ontario. He attended Ontario College of Art and Design, but dropped out in 1980, in order to join the Fifty Fingers design group. Mau stayed in the group for two years, and then travelled to the United Kingdom for a brief sojourn at Pentagram. A year later, he returned to Toronto and became a founding member of ‘Public Good Design and Communications’. Shortly after Mau was presented with an opportunity to design Zone 1/2 books, culminating in Mau establishing his own studio, ‘Bruce Mau Design’ (FamousGraphicDesigners.org 2017; History Of Graphic Design 2017).

Mau has a reputation as a perceptive creative strategist, who has made a career out of challenging creativity. He believe that entrepreneurs do not spend enough time crafting, thinking and testing; they do not look at ideas in context (Robinson 2011).

In the 1990s, Bruce Mau wrote an article entitled “An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth”. At an international design conference, Mau presented these 43 rules to creating a good and meaningful design. Mau and his team of designers use these rules to get through challenging projects. He believes it makes the lives of designers much easier when creating something step by step, as one’s mind tends to drift off. Mau also believes that every designer should attempt to copy the work of others and forget whether it looks good or not (Czarnecki 2012).

The gist of the manifesto is to get rid of anything you think you know about creativity. A few of the main points include “keep moving”; Mau encourages designers to allow failure to become a part of their practice (Robinson 2011). Mau also encourages designers to “ask stupid questions”, stepping back and learning to look at things differently by assessing the answers and not the questions themselves. These stupid questions help designers solve challenging problems (Czarnecki 2012). Another point that stands out is to “capture accidents”; Mau states that the wrong answer could potentially become the right answer to a question that you have not yet asked (Robinson 2011).

Bruce Mau’s theory is that design has the potential to help nations and countries to solve problems both in the present and in the future. The designs still have to look good to entice people to read and think about the problems that humans cause. His aim with his designs is to attempt to improve the well-being of humanity (Czarnecki 2012).

Mau sees where things are going then uses a purpose-driven method for imagining to get there first. He has designed for clients such as Emeco, Herman Miller, Indigo Books & Music, L.A. River Corporation, McDonald’s, Museum of Modern Art and The Coca-Cola Company among others. Mau’s designs are clean and dynamic, utilizing shape and line above all (Massive Change Network 2016).

In his career spanning over 30 years, Mau has collaborated on design and branding for major companies like Coca-Cola, Disney, McDonald’s and MTV, as well as universities, books, cultural institutions and even countries (Gordon 2015).

Bruce Mau technically has no personal design style. Instead, he takes his clients’ products’ meaning and turns it into a design. His style is adaptive and dynamic. It shows off the reason behind the product (Czanecki 2012).

The reason that I selected this designer as inspiration to me is because his views are unique and the fact that he changes his style according to the meaning of the product or concept is intriguing. There is a lot that can be learned from Bruce Mau, not only in his philosophy and ideas, but also in his vision for the future of design. My ideas reflect his own; I too believe that design has the potential to change the world. The way that a design looks is only important to draw people in and to get them to think about whatever message you as a designer are trying to communicate.

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