Bruce Mau

An integrated monography

a 1
3
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Editorial Contents Inside the magazine you will find two inserts: a poster
with the Manifesto and a copybook to write your own.

Biography 04
Quote: Article:
Idea of Design 06 Edit: our story 41
This Monography speaks about Bruce Mau, a canadian Article: Quote:
designer. We worked as an editorial board and What is good? 09 Do something better 44
each of us curated one of the four rubrics. To make
Bruce Mau SPeaks: Article:
everything less conventional we decided to include in
the monography An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth,
About Design 10 The Global image economy 56
written by Mau in 1998, which we think rapresents an Article: Article:
essential part of Bruce Mau ideals. The Manifesto is A Studio is not a tree 13 Guateamala 63
integrated with differents articles taken by sources such
as Massive Change, Lyfestyle and conference that Bruce Article: Article:
Mau took. Growth as an event 21 Prosperity for all 67
We decided to focus our work on the social and ethical
commitment that emerge from Mau’s work, in every Bruce Mau speaks: Quote:
field. What we tried to do was to integrate the Manifesto Growth of economy 26 Protest, protect, or produce 76
to make it less “incomplete” in some way, that’s the
reason for our title. Bruce Mau speaks: Article:
In the end we decided to organize the Monography so Designing the Big Mother 28 what will we do? 77
that every rubric could be both a stand alone piece that
an unique Magazine once assembled all toghether. Quote: Quote:
Naturalizing 29 The best time to be alive 81
Quote: Bruce Mau speaks:
The visual 32 The Lost in the Forest institute 85
Article: Bruce Mau speaks:
Design is invisible 33 Live positively: a case of study 87
Quote: Article:
close your eyes 38 Prosumer 92
Biography

Born on October 25, 1959, in Canada, From 1996 to 1999, he explored

Bruce Mau grew up in Sudbury, Ontario. profession of teaching as he accepted
He went on to attend the Ontario College the position of the associate professor
of Art & Design. In 1980, he dropped out at a Houston university,Rice University
of the college before graduation as he School of Architecture.
intended to join the Fifty Fingers design In addition to that Mau is a member of
group. He remained part of the group for the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.
two years and then traveled to UK for a He is also an honorary fellow of the Idea of Design
brief sojourn at Pentagram. Ontario College of Art & Design.
Upon his return to Toronto, he became In 1998, to honor his contribution to “The fundamental idea of design is to
one of the founding members of Public graphic designing and architect he was make the world a better place. I’ve never
Good Design and Communications ran by presented with the Chrysler Award for met a designer wakes up in the morning
the triumvirate. Soon he found himself Design Innovation. The following year and says: “my idea is to make things
presented with the opportunity to design he received Toronto Arts Award for worst”. The core idea behind design is:
Zone 1/2 books which culminates in Mau Architecture and Design. In order to help “can we do this better?”. Is driven by an
ethical commitment to society.”
establishing Bruce Mau Design studio. the young generation of designers and
He maintained his position as a design creative folks, Bruce Mau designed a 43
-Bruce Mau
director for Zone Books until 2004. point program. It is called an Incomplete
He also co-edited a Zone imprint, Swerve Manifesto for Growth which assists its
Editions. During early 1990’s, Mau users in forming and assessing their
was appointed the creative director design process.
of I.D. magazine.

4 5
 take a picture if you want to hear

ALLOW EVENTS TO CHANGE YOU

the conference where Bruce Mau
talks about Massive Change

You have to be willing to grow.

Growth is different from something that
happens to you. You produce it.
You live it.
The prerequisites for growth: the
openness to experience events and the
willingness to be changed by them.

6 7
FORGET ABOUT GOOD
Good is a known quantity. Good is what
we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily
2 WHAT
IS
GOOD?

One of the first things that

impressed me as a young designer
While there, I had lived through
the ascent of Thatcherism.
a union initiative, or producing an
educational program. Our work
was the politics of form. The way I I had experienced first-hand the revolved around social effects
good. Growth is an exploration of unlit
saw it, the most important formal British class system, which to and objectives-literacy, education,
recesses that may or may not yield to our
developments were intimately a young Canadian was at once health, justice, workplace issues-
research. As long as you stick to good
linked to social discoveries and opaque and absurd. and design was deployed in the
you’ll never have real growth. political action. People forged new I eventually left London and service of achieving results. My
visions of the world and needed hooked up with two friends in New work could look deadpan but
to express them. The connection York, Steven Bock and Elisabeth have profound effect. In some way
between social and formal Matheson, who proposed that I think this is the genesis of the
innovation could not be ignored. we return to Toronto and launch approach that Bruce Mau Design
The first company I started was Public Good. Our ambition was would take later. My role at Public
called Public Good. It was an to bring meaning to the work we Good lasted only a few years.
enterprise very much concerned produced. In that context, the It ended when I became involved
with the social implications of the notion of “good” was liberated with Zone. My two partners
work we produced. from any visual or aesthetic did not want to pursue the project
Previously, I had been in London expression. Some of our work but I did. I had no idea at the time
working with a corporate design generated no visual evidence. that the project would extend
agency world-renowned for its It involved, for instance, analyzing into an extraordinary fifteen-year
“good design.” and assisting the organization of intellectual adventure.

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 3
Bruce Mau speaks:

About Design
Design thinking is that methodology that is of envision a future and systematically
out of agnostic. Design thinking doesn’t start execute that vision. And that’s really what
with: we are gonna produce this thing. It we are working on with MCN, the more than
starts with what are we trying to accomplish, we can actually package that in a way that
what is the impact we want to create, people can downloaded in their own lives
translating that challenge into opportunities and uses in their business in their lives in
and then how to execute those opportunities. the way they do things the better things
If you think about it the real foundation of will be. It’s really about the problem solving
design thinking is leadership: is the abilityW methodology that is agnostic to outcome.

Curated by Enrico Monasteri

PROCESS IS
MORE IMPORTANT
THAN OUTCOME
When the outcome drives the process
we will only ever go to where we’ve
already been. If process drives outcome
we may not know where we’re going,
but we will know we want to be there.

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Massive Change, Wealth and Politics Economy Room, Vancouver Art Gallery
LOVE YOUR EXPERIMENTS
(as you would an ugly child)
Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the
liberty in casting your work as beautiful
4 GROWTH
AS AN EVENT

As we enter the twenty-first

century, I believe that the new
Few of us are ready to admit that
growth is constantly shadowed
follows the barrenness of winter.
Death opens up fields of potential.
experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, problem facing us will be growth. by its constitutive opposite, that I increasingly believe that the
and errors. Take the long view and allow As both designers and global it is equal partners with death. future of design rests in our ability
yourself the fun of failure every day. citizens we will need to broach this Immersed in the logic of growth, and willingness to develop new
problem in different ways. We will we have, for the most part, practices and theories of form
need to test the limits of growth. denied the liberating potential that are inextricably linked to, and
Growth, as I see it, is a problem of death. (For us, there is only informed by, life and growth.
separate from speed and “more” addition, neversubtraction; As we observe the life of the object,
and reproduction. Growth is a time- accumulation,never decay.) and the effect of that object on
based event, with breaking points In our shortsightedness, we have the life around it, we can learn
and moments of rupture that banished death both from nature that growth is not about limits
generate entirely new conditions. and from our approach to design in the same way that speed was,
Growth is nonlinear and practice. If we look at how growth because growth is about qualities,
unpredictable. This is important behaves in nature, we see it not quantities. More precisely, it
to emphasize. Many of us have coupled with a phenomenon of is about the qualities- wild and
come to see growth as the clearing.Forest fires produce a cycle incalculable- that emerge from
interrupted telos of progress. of life and regeneration. Spring quantity.

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 growth
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GO DEEP
The deeper you go the
more likely you will discover
CAPTURE ACCIDENTS
The wrong answer is the right answer in
search of a different question.
6
5
something of value. Collect wrong answers as part
of the process.
Ask different questions.

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 Accidents, disasters, crises. When system
fail we become temporarily conscious of the
extraordinary force and power o design, and
the effects, that it generates. Every accident
provides a brief moment of awarness of real
life, what is actually happening, and our
dependence on the underlying system of
design

-from Massive Change

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Jet fuel tank caused by Supertyphoon Pongsone, Apra Harbor, Guam, December 2002
 7
Bruce Mau’s 24 Principles for Massive Change

STUDY

A
The studio is a kind of self- maximum innocence on the
A studio is a place of study.
propelled entity: agile and one hand, and a willingness to
Use the necessity of production
resilient, drifting in search accommodate almost any input
as an excuse to study.

STUDIO
of events (problems and on the other.
Everyone will benefit. accidents), selecting and But, by activating these
inserting itself as an active contradictory modes, by pushing
force within the realities it each to its logical conclusion,

IS
chooses to engage in - those we make new work.
that surround it, and those that We are developing a
make it up. We have withstood methodology that is without

NOT
the corrosive environment boundaries.
of capital, media, gravity, One that implies a continuous
magnetism, misrepresentation, variation in activity and defines
translation, error, absence, a movement from work to free

A
dispersal, malfeasance, and action. The practice avoids
BAD LUCK, by remaining flexible. being consumed or spent in this
Our work exists between the activity by continually borrowing
purity of invention and the or siphoning energy from

TREE
contamination of compromise. adjacent fields and practices
It is a strategy that seems such as cinema, philosophy, and
impossible, expressing a science; and from the works of

20 21
Chris Marker, Marshall McLuhan,
and John Cage, among others.
In sum, this is a model not only
of survival but of cultivation-
the cultivation of pleasure.
Within a conservative definition
of design, I would be expected
to put on the mask of my client
and say what he or she told
me to say.
In essence, I would live as a
ventriloquist’s dummy. I cannot
imagine ever accepting that as
a way of life. By formulating
our practice the way we
have, we find in our water
glass an ocean of possibility.
The edge of the studio is
defined by an increasingly
and as outside collaborators
penetrate. To understand the
studio, you must understand
the way we have defined
collaboration. A collaborator
comes to the studio with an
undefined relationship to the
proposed work. They approach
with an understanding that
anything is possible.
They arrive prepared to ignore
limits, engage content, and
develop something new. They
may have expectations, even
quite specific ones, but within
those expectations or desires,
there is space for invention.
We, on the other hand, enter an
open space of learning. DR
8
permeable membrane, a sort of It is an enviable position. IFT
informational Gore-Tex. In fact, At the best of times we have
it’s harder to find the edge as been students with the world’s
studio collaborators push out, greatest teachers. Allow yourself to wander aimlessly.
Explore adjacencies.
Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.

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9
EVERYONE IS A LEADER
Growth happens.
Whenever it does, allow it to emerge.
Learn to follow when it makes sense.
Let anyone lead.
where to begin is a common form of
John Cage tells us that not knowing
BEGIN ANYWHERE

begin anywhere.
His advice:
paralysis.

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 1
Bruce Mau speaks:

Growth of economy
Has we grown from 7 to 10 billion
everything we do has an impact. When
we invented the car we didn’t say let’s
trash the enviroment set up geopolitical
conflict that has been lasting for decades.
We set up to make a beautiful thing

1
that was a beautiful experience. But we
didn’t see the long term implications of it.
What we realize now is that almost all our
economies is based on increasingly short
term firm, we are not thinking about a five
years plans or an annual results, we are
thinking milliseconds, so more and more
we are intros crazy short term economy.

Curated by Enrico Monasteri HARVEST IDEAS

Edit applications.
Ideas need a dynamic, fluid,
generous environment to sustain life.
Applications, on the other hand, benefit
from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio
of ideas to applications.

We live in the age of transparency,

the technology today allows us
to see behind the image. but
that new world of transparency
means that if everything is visible,
everything therefore must be
designed.

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Bruce Mau speaks:

Designing the
Big Mother
We are working on a personal black box,
that’s basically a declaration of personal
data independents, it allows you to own
the control of your data, the privacy and
the benefits that come with that and never
to compromise that in order to create
value. So you own your data and you get
the value from your own data. If someone
is tracking all your data, and that’s what
actually happening with cookies, that’s the
opposite of freedom. You don’t own your
data, you don’t see it. If someone is tracking
everything that you do that is Big Brother,
we are designing sort of Big Mother: how
can we care for you? how can we help you?
That’s the best way to create value.

Curated by Enrico Monasteri

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 POWER 22
Curated by Teresa Zavattiero

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 Naturalizing
“One of the most extraordinary
capacities of human intelligence is our
capacity to naturalize. If you think of
getting on an airplane and flying from
one place to another, it doesn’t seem like
a very strange thing to do, but in fact it’s
absolutely extraordinary. We’ve designed
the experience in such a way that we can
do it. We need to make our experience
strange again so that we can see it. And
we need to see that to be able to take
part in deciding and articulating what
we want the world to be.”

-Bruce Mau

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Put the acetate sheet here and move it from left to right Put the acetate sheet here and move it from left to right

KEEP MOVING SLOW DOWN

The market and its operations have a tendency Desynchronize from standard time frames
to reinforce success. Resist it. and surprising opportunities may present themselves.
Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.

30 31
 8. Trasmission towers crushed and power
lines downed by freezing rain in Boucherville,
Québec, January 1998.

FOR MOST In fact, the secret ambition of

design is to become invisible, to be
taken up into the culture, absorbed
Every plane crush is a rupture,
a shock to the system, precisely,
because our experience of flight

OF US,
into the background. The highest is so carefully designed away from
order of success in design is to the reality of the event.
achieve ubiquity, to become banal. As we sip champagne, read the

DESIGN IS
morning paper, and settle in
The visual The automobile, the freeway, the before takeoff, we choose not
airplane, the cell phone, the air to experience the torque, the
“Design is principally expressed visually, conditioner, the high-rise – all thrust, the speed, the altitude,
it’s become stuck in the visual. People
who think about design talk about the INVISIBLE. invented and developed first in the
West, but fully adepte and embrice
the world over – have achieved
the temperature, the thousands
of pounds of explosive jet fuels
cradled beneath us, the infinite

UNTIL IT
visual. For us, one of the most important design nirvana. They are no longer complexity of onboard systems,
things we did in conceptualizing the considered unnatural. They are and the very real risks and dangers
project was to say, Let’s take the visual boring, even tedious. of takeoff and landing.

FAILS.
Most of the time, we live our lives Massive Change is an ambitious
off the table as the principal criterion. within these invisible systems, project that humbly attempts to
Obviously, we’re obsessed with the blissfully unaware of the artificial chart the bewildering complexity
aesthetic dimension of our work, but by life, the intensely designed of our increasingly interconnected
taking it off the table as the principal infrastructures that support them. (and designed) world. We have
done our best to open it up by
factor, something else comes onto the
Accidents, disasters, crises. When breaking it down, and putting as
table, which is human capacity. And that systems fail we become temporarily many fascinating fragments as we
can sometimes be invisible.” conscious of the extraordinary could find back together again,
force and power of design, and between the covers of this books.
-Bruce Mau the effects that it generates. Every We hope to make evident the
accident provides a brief moment design decisions that go on and are
of awareness of real life, what made manifesta cross disciplines.
is actually happening, and our Massive Change is not about the
dependence on the underlying world of design; it’s about the
systems of design. design of the world.

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 14
9. Subatomic particle tracks in a bubble
chamber at the Fermi National Accelerator
Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois.

10. Time made visible: this Hubble Ultra Deep

image shows galaxies as they were thirteen
billion years ago.

DON’T BE COOL
Cool is conservative fear dressed in black.
Free yourself from limits of this sort.

WE WILL MAKE VISIBLE THE AS YET

INVISIBLE.
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ASK STUPID QUESTIONS
15
Growth is fuelled by desire and innocence.
Assess the answer, not the question.
COLLABORATE
The space between people working together is filled
with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight,
Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate and vast creative potential.
of an infant.

36 37
Close your eyes
“How does design shape the world
that we experience?
17 Allow
for
ideas
space
the
you
haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.

One of the thought experiments

you can do is to close your eyes and
imagine opening them in a place
where you see nothing that is designed.”

-Bruce Mau

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 11-12. EDIT: Expo for Design, Innovation and
Technology, Toronto 2017.

EDIT: DESIGN IS THE

DOORWAY TO A
THE EXPO OUR
WORLD NEEDS
OUR BETTER FUTURE.
It is why poverty, illiteracy,
RIGHT NOW.
The need for EDIT was brought

STORY
and sickness have significantly to Levy’s attention after “We the
decreased in the last two decades. People” – a video about the United
Drones are monitoring disaster Nations Development Programme’s
regions; vertical gardens are 17 Goals for Sustainable
expanding new opportunities for Development arrived in her inbox.
green space; and food waste is “For me, these goals – from
being transformed into precious building infrastructure and cities to
renewable energy. protecting ocean life – are design
Yet, few people are aware of these challenges,” said Levy.
profound undertakings. And even The goals are the inspiration
fewer are aware that design plays a behind EDIT’s five themes: Nourish,
critical role in bringing innovative Shelter, Care, Educate, and the
solutions to life. This disconnect overarching message of Prosperity
was Shauna Levy’s reason for for All.
launching EDIT: Expo for Design, “EDIT is a global platform for
Innovation & Technology - an ideas that can change the world,”
immersive expo-meets-festival she says. Shifting design thinking
built to improve the world’s limited from handbags and interiors
experience with the subject. “For to 3D-printed prosthetics and
virtually my entire professional life, aquaponics, EDIT will expose
it has been my mission to improve a mass audience to the design
the accessibility and popular projects that are transforming our
understanding of design,” says future at this very moment.
Levy, President and CEO of Design
Exchange and co-founder of the
Interior Design Show.

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 18
13-14. EDIT: Expo for Design, Innovation
and Technology, Toronto 2017.

PROSPERITY EDIT’s main exhibit, showcases the

most promising design, innovation
and technology solutions to the

FOR ALL
planet’s pressing issues.
Bruce Mau will hand-pick a
selection of work from Paolo
Pellegrin – an award-winning

STAY UP LATE
by BRUCE MAU
Magnum photographer renowned
for his unflinching documentation
of global conflicts.
Against this powerful backdrop, Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far,
the exhibit will also highlight been up too long, worked too hard,
design projects that confront these
challenges and seek to advance the
and you’re separated from the rest of the world.
human condition.
From smog vacuum cleaners in
China to floating schools in Nigeria,
EDIT visitors will discover the
people and organizations designing
products, systems and materials
that are making a difference in the
world today.

HOW CAN WE SOLVE THE WORLD’S

GRAND CHALLENGES?
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Do something better Fold the sheet, then look at it from left and from right

“We realized that the most critical action

one can take is to do something better.
That’s not recognized in our intellectual
environment, but the luxury of cynicism
is not accessible to me; I have the
responsibility to actually produce
something.”

-Bruce Mau WORK THE METAPHOR

Every object has the capacity to stand
for something other than what is apparent.
Work on what it stands for.

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BE CAREFUL TO TAKE RISKS
Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday
and the parent of tomorrow.
The work you produce today will create your future.

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REPEAT YOURSELF
If you like it, do it again.
If you don’t like it, do it again.

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MAKE YOUR OWN TOOLS
Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things.
Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely
new avenues of exploration.
Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even
a small tool can make a big difference.

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 TO
THE 33
Curated by Martina Pennino

54 55
 15. Commercial Street in Bangalore, India

56 57
53
 23
STAND ON SOMEONE’S SHOULDERS
You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments
of those who came before you.
And the view is so much better.

54 55
 We live in a twenty-four-hour market world where less and less terrain remains unregulated.
Less terrain falls outside of the regime of the logo and its image. Today, events, styles, cultures,
technologies, memes - as well as rumors, scares, and insults - pass through and are incorporated into
the global image economy, reverbarating with and distorting one another, all with the capacity to
produce - and to erase - wealth, value and meaning.

Designers today experience Contrary to the popular maxim, maintaining the dialogue with
a condition of ambiguity and the digital age does not behave the context and facing the
compromise: building, aiding, like a revolution, but its opposite, contradictions it imposes on our
and abetting the global image an apparently predatory totality work.
economy seem inevitable surrounding us. And yet, it is No matter how bleak the situation
consequences of our work. transforming human capacities for into which we have been thrown
Prospects of that condition communication, for environmental by the global image economy, it
changing seem remote. reform, for productivity and offers opportunities, we only need
Nonetheless, our obligation creativity. Every aspect of the to invent them. By understanding
to exploit the situation is global image economy is darkly our living and working context, we
compelling, provided that we problematic, yet every aspect of it open, even if temporarily, avenues
are willing, given our position, to also carries a potential for human of liberty not yet charted or even
recognize the potential of radical reinvention. If the accelerated explored.
contradiction and to take an eagerly image-production technologies
opportunistic posture in looking for have saturated society, they On the left:

the openings that appear before us. also have put image-making 16. “Billboards in Broadway”

What I am attempting, in response capability into the hands of non- Photograph by Darren Barnes

to the torrential acceleration of the professionals. Technology has

global image economy, is engaged miniaturized the image-making
design. process. Today, a feature film that
Engagement means enlisting all once would have required a large
the restrictions, conditions, and technical facility backed by a huge
limitations of the context in which financial apparatus can now be fully
we work. It means taking on the realized in a medium-size room
background, like it or not, and rented in a typical provincial town.
bringing it to every foreground. Proliferation also means dispersion.
The question we have to ask Dispersion means new potential
is: What is our relationship to strategies constantly appear, if we
this beast? Every set of the are willing to look at the openings.

THE GLOBAL IMAGE

developments we have inventoried But people tend only to look at
has a downside and an upside. the contradiction. Unless we come
The downside is obvious and to terms with the global image
depressingly easy to catalog. economy and the way it permeates
The upside is up to us to discover, the thing we make and see, we

ECONOMY
or more importantly, to invent. are doomed to a life’s work of
We must, then, be super-provisional decorating and redecorating.
and hyper-opportunistic. And coming to terms means

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DON’T CLEAN YOUR DESK
You might find something in the
morning that you can’t see tonight.
DON’T ENTER AWARDS COMPETITIONS
Just don’t. It’s not good for you.

58 59
What will be.com of us?
One of the dilemmas of the coming era
is that there is no erasing anymore.
27
READ ONLY LEFT-HANDED PAGES
Marshall McLuhan did this.
By decreasing the amount of information,
As the mass and volume of information we leave room for what he called our ‘noodle’.
increase, people search for a clear signal.
More powerful than ever, the role of
the navigator becomes indispensable.
We are suggesting the designer as a
difficult, problematic figure, one who
cannot afford to be stable. We have
tried to turn our work into a costant
process of growth, a living thing that
responds to its environment and, as the
environment itself evolves, propagates
new opportunities.

Bruce Mau

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MAKE NEW WORDS. EXPAND THE LEXICON
The new conditions demand a new way of thinking.
The thinking demands new forms of expression.
¡GUATEAMALA!
We must be optimistic to undertake the demanding work of solving
the great challenges ahead.

In 2004, a group of Guatemalan

leaders of the Fundación Proyecto
challenges that the country faces.
The result of this connection is
in different regions of Guatemala,
introduce projects to the world and
The expression generates new conditions. de Vida asked Bruce Mau Design to a vigorous and self-sustaining link Guatemala to international
assist in producing a vision for the movement that combats the expertise while highlighting the
future of Guatemala. status quo. growing network within the country.
This vision would be powerful The primary goal of the vision was This multi-year communications
enough to galvanize action and to generate a strong collective project continues to develop
create a positive movement for the interest among the country’s strategies to galvanize action and
country going forward. population, as it is they who will mobilize a nation.
The aim was to create a ultimately realize the vision;
multifaceted vision that could and to make this movement part
embrace many initiatives, of a global initiative that connects Above and next page:
incorporate many partners and Guatemala to an international 17, 18 Events for ¡GUATEAMALA!
resonate internationally. network of like interests.
¡GuateAmala! connects the new BMD also worked with the
possibilities and potentials Fundacion Proyecto de Vida to
developing in the world to the develop a series of events that
ambition of Guatemala and the continue the discourse and action

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THINK WITH YOUR MIND
Forget technology.
Creativity is not device–dependent.

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PROSPERITY FOR ALL
Our future is no longer about selling more stuff to more people,
it’s about understanding our potential as citizens and producing
shared prosperity.

Freeman, the leading global of creativity, data and design to create value is through design, as it
provider of brand experiences, and solve problems, innovate faster, gives us the ability to envision the
world-renowned innovator, designer eliminate waste, optimize processes future and systematically work to
and author Bruce Mau, worked and better serve its customers and realize that vision. With ‘Prosperity
together to present ‘Prosperity for employees – and eventually, the for All’, Freeman has created
All’, a 12,000 square foot exhibition, world. an inspirational live experience
produced by Freeman, that has “Design creates more meaning and steeped in purpose and backed by
been on display at the first-ever opportunities as our world becomes data.
EDIT: Expo for Design, Innovation & increasingly driven by purpose and
Technology in Toronto. sustainable human development.
Together, Freeman and Mau, Design is a leadership methodology
chief design officer of Freeman, that is solving the challenges we’re
co-founder of Massive Change facing today, to create a better
Network and EDIT’s inaugural chief tomorrow,” said Mau. “The way
curator, are harnessing the power we think to solve problems and

ORGANIZATION=LIBERTY
Real innovation in design, or any other
field, happens in context. That context
is usually some form of cooperatively
managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for
instance, is only able to realize Bilbao
because his studio can deliver it on
budget. The myth of a split between
‘creatives’ and ‘suits’ is what Leonard
Cohen calls a “charming artifact of
the past.”

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 31
Together, we highlight that the that seek to advance the human change and purpose come together.
future is about understanding our condition. From smog vacuums in That philosophy is at the heart
potential as citizens and designing Chinato community revitalization of Freeman, and at the heart of
and producing shared prosperity on Fogo Island, ‘Prosperity for ‘Prosperity for All’.”
and abundance.” All’ is a celebration of the people Produced by Freeman, Mau’s exhibit
The ‘Prosperity for All’ exhibit and projects that are making a was designed and built to be 100
creates an immersive experience difference in the world today. percent sustainable with materials
for participants on a grand scale. Freeman is a major sponsor of the that can be repurposed or recycled,
The projects included in the inaugural event, exemplifying its and crafted to be a reusable,
exhibit illustrate how design is commitment to and the importance traveling exhibit.
playing a critical role to address of such large cultural projects that
global challenges, as outlined by bring innovation to light and make
the United Nations Development positive impact. Below and previous page:
Program’s 17 Goals for Sustainable “’Prosperity for All’ showcases the 19, 20 Photos from EDIT: Expo by Paolo
Development. As an experiential very values Freeman was built on, Pellegrin Studio
events leader that does business and what Freeman works toward
in nearly every industry, Freeman is as a global company. We are proud
committed to advancing society and to sponsor an event dedicated to
elevating the human experience by innovation for a positive future
connecting people in meaningful on such a large scale,” said Bob
ways on a global scale – ultimately Priest-Heck, president of Freeman.
helping to affect change across the “Freeman stands in support
world. of the commitment to create
As EDIT’s main exhibit, ‘Prosperity prosperity – economic impact,
for All’ contrasts Magnum knowledge, learning and social
photographer Paolo Pellegrin’s connection. We are dedicated to
documentation of global conflicts continually producing face-to-face DON’T BORROW MONEY
with design projects rooted in data experiences where innovation,
Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice.
By maintaining financial control, we
maintain creative control. It’s not exactly
rocket science, but it’s surprising how
hard it is to maintain this discipline, and
how many have failed.

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68 69
 32 33
LISTEN CAREFULLY TAKE FIELD TRIPS
The bandwidth of the world is greater
than that of your TV set, or the Internet,
or even a totally immersive, interactive,
dynamically rendered, object–oriented,
real–time, computer graphic–simulated
environment.

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Design makes things move
Design makes things move, but that is the
least of its power. For the type of movement
that design projects into objects has the in-
tention to make other things move. Design
modifies objects so that they, in turn, can
modify the world.

Sanford Kwinter

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 THE 43
Curated by Gianluca Locatelli

78 79
 21. "We have a responsibility to create
solutions, we have a responsibility to
wake up every morning not to be blind
to reality but to be open to possibility and
understand what is the potential in the
place we are, what is the potential in our
situation, how can we contribute, how
can we make the most of what we have
and be able to see it. It starts with facts
and research, so it’s not just hope,
it’s actually optimism driven by reality."

-Bruce Mau

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MAKE MISTAKES IMITATE
Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can.
You’ll never get all the way, and the separation might
be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard
Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large
glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused
imitation is as a technique.

This isn’t my idea - I borrowed it.

I think it belongs to Andy Grove.

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 Now that we can do
anything, what will we do?
By Bruce Mau Design

The twentieth century will be chiefly remembered by future generations

not as an era of political conflicts or technical inventions, but as an age in
which human society dared to think of the welfare of the whole human race
as a practical objective.
- Arnold J. Toynbee, English historian (1889-1975)

In his Nobel Prize acceptance pace over the last fifty, is that
speech on December 11, 1957, design is changing its place in the
former Prime Minister of Canada order of things. Design is evolving
Lester B. Pearson quoted historian from its position of relative
Arnold Toynbee, well known for his insignificance within business (and
monumental A Study of History. the larger envelope of nature),
The main thesis of Toynbee’s to become the biggest project of
work is that the well being of a all. Even life itself has fallen (or is
civilization depends on its ability falling) to the power and possibility
to respond creatively to challenges, of design. Empowered as such, we
human and environmental. He was have a responsibility to address
optimistic about the twentieth the new set of questions that go
century. He believed that the along with that power. At the same
cycle of rise and decline was not time, we acknowledge the hubris
inevitable, that the future is not and inherent paradox of the new
determined by the past, and that position we find ourselves in: We
a civilization could choose and are designing nature and we are
act wisely in the face of recurring subject to her laws and powers.
hardships. His prediction posed This new condition demands that
a challenge - and an opportunity design discourse not be limited
- during the post-WWII era; it was to boardrooms or kept inside
significant enough for Pearson tidy disciplines. As a first step
Protest, protect, or produce to reference it in the context of to achieving this, we abandoned
international peacekeeping during the classical design disciplines in
"Do we as designers have the the Cold War era; and it continues our research and, instead, began
responsibility to protest, to protect or to to challenge us today, into the to explore systems of exchange,
produce? I want to make an argument twenty-first century. Our world now or design “economies.” Instead
faces profound challenges, many of looking at product design,
for responsibility based on our capacity, brought on by innovation itself. we looked at the economies of
what our unique talent is in the world, Although optimism runs counter movement. Instead of isolating
what we have to offer and what the best to the mood of the times, there are graphic design, we considered the
contribution we can make really is." extraordinary new forces aligning economies of information, and
around these great challenges, so on. The patterns that emerged
around the world. If you put reveal complexity, integrated
-Bruce Mau together all that’s going on at the thinking across disciplines, and
edges of culture and technology, unprecedented interconnectivity.
you get a wildly unexpected view
of the future. Massive Change We will tap into the global
charts this terrain. commons.
Massive Change is about the power
We will explore design economies. and promise of design. Design
Not since the age of invention have success equals global success.
so many new products, processes, What makes this possible is the
and services become available to radical change in scale in the
the public. What we see over the capacity of design tomeet human
last hundred and fifty years, needs the world over. The old-
22. and in a dramatically accelerated fashioned notion of an individual

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with a dream of perfection is
being replaced by distributed
problem solving and team-based
multidisciplinary practice. The
reality for advanced design today
is dominated by three ideas:
distributed, plural, collaborative.
It is no longer about one designer,
one client, one solution, one place.
Problems are taken up everywhere,
solutions are developed and tested
and contributed to the global
commons, and those ideas are
tested against other solutions.
The effect of this is to imagine a
future for design that is both more
modest and more ambitious. More
modest in the sense that we take
our place in what our studio’s
chief scientist Bill Buxton calls the
renaissance team, a group that
collectively develops the capacity
to deal with the demands of the
given project. More ambitious in
that we take our place in society,
willing to implicate ourselves,
in the consequences of our
imagination.

We will distribute capacity.

One thing is certain: We don’t
out to the broadest audience,
to the people directly affected
by the work of designers. The
effect of the new conditions is to
distribute potential, or capacity,
worldwide and allow contribution
by anyone, anywhere. The future
of global design is fundamentally
collaborative. In this condition
there is no room for censorship.

We will embrace paradox.

Massive Change calls for greater
public discourse and personal
responsibility for designers and
their projects; at the same time,
it is thrilled by the open-source
effect of the cultural project of
design. The moment we came
upon Toynbee’s quote in Pearson’s
lecture, we knew we had our
project because it included the
phrase “practical objective”;
it shifted the objective of the
welfare of the human race from
a utopian ambition - one that is
by definition out of reach and
will remain in the realm of art -
to a design project, a practical
objective. There is a proposal
integrated into Massive Change
BREAK
37
STRETCH IT
need a thought police. We need for a right-angle shift in the axis
discussion. We need thinking.
We need critical faculties. We
of discourse defined by right and
left, socialism and capitalism. The
BEND
need to embrace the dilemmas
and conflicts in design, and take
new axis is defined by advanced
and retrograde, forward and CRUSH
responsibility for the outcomes of reverse. Plainly, Massive Change
our work. When we use the term
“we,” we don’t mean designers as
is a project that embraces the
potential of advanced capitalism,
CRACK
separate from clients, or as some
extraordinary class of powerful
advanced socialism, and advanced
globalization. In that sense, FOLD
overseers. We mean “we” as Massive Change is obviously
citizens collectively imagining ambitiously positive, and might be
our futures. It is critical that the misunderstood as utopian at first
discussions go beyond the design glance. But it is not futuristic. It is
fields themselves and reach about what is already happening.

22, 23. THE MANY FACES OF EARTH.

NASA’s Earth Observatory satellites and Japan’s Earth Simulator (ES) capture complex data that
is processed and rendered into myriad global portraits, each one telling a story about Earth’s
patterns (radiation, oceans, weather, etc.).
Thanks to the ES Center, a 40-teraflop collaborative climate-modeling project, we are able
to understand the Earth holistically, with all factors entangling together at once, from
microprocesses of clouds or snow to macroprocesses of atmospheric circulation.

78 79
SCAT
36
When you forget the words, do what Ella did:
make up something else… but not words.
The best time to be alive
"Today is the best time in human history
to be alive and working. There’s never
been a more opportune moment to be
a person. Even with all the challenges
we face, it’s an extraordinary moment
in history in terms of our access to
possibility. In fact, the great challenges
we now face are success problems,
not failure problems. They are the new
class of problems that have emerged
principally because we have succeeded
in overcoming so many challenges."

-Bruce Mau

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 38 39
EXPLORE THE OTHER EDGE
Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with
the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge
COFFEE BREAKS, CAB RIDES, GREEN ROOMS
Real growth often happens outside of where we
intend it to, in the interstitial spaces - what Dr. Seuss
because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old–tech calls “the waiting place.” Hans Ulrich Obrist once
equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but organized a science and art conference with all of
still rich with potential. the infrastructure of a conference - the parties, chats,
lunches, airport arrivals - but with no actual conference.
Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned
many ongoing collaborations.

82 83
 Bruce Mau Speaks curated by Gianluca Locatelli

The Lost in the Forest Institute

transcripted from a video interview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpRxAovJM7g&t

The approach for Massive Change idea of saying to do that you need a difference between being on a
is to create an entrepreneurial an entrepreneurial learner, and picnic and being lost in the forest..
experience purpose driven using design as a methodology of When you are on a picnic, you
educational model. The idea integrating science and art into an might be in the very same place,
here is to use action and real iterative practice of development but on a picnic you don’t care
purpose to accelerate education around real challenge and purpose. very much about the environment
and development. So rather And what that means is that you are in, your concern is
than cutting education off the you take real situations in your about who brought the coke,
challenges we face we use the world, in your community, and and who’s got the sandwiches.
challenge as a kind of accelerator, you develope projects that will When you are lost in the forest,
rocket fuel to entrepreneurial solve those problems. And that every piece of information is
education. And we know the approach means that it’s a win for important to you. The fact that
importance of this because of the the community, you leave a legacy the land slopes this way, and the
rate of change. We are doubling our of real development and capacity sun is over there, and I can hear
technological capacity every twelve in the community, and you develop water, well all of that information
months and doubling the double. the methodology and the expertise is immediately relevant. An
We know that a student doing a to be constantly innovating and to entrepreneur processes everything,
four years technical degree, after be dealing with the challenges that all the information as tools.
four years by the time he graduates will emerge in the future. Because An entrepreneur looks at the
two of those years are redundant. you know, one of the ways I talk landscape, looks at the situation
Two of those years, the information about it, that it’s not the content and says “you know what? I can
in two of those years had been of the experience that you need use these three things and put
made obsolete. So you no longer to learn, it’s the experience of the them together to make a new thing
need to learn that information, you content. It’s the experience that that people really need”. And that
need to learn an entrepreneurial you need to learn. You need to methodology is the real outcome
constant mode of development know that you can be lost in the for Massive Change.
to explore the possibilities as forest and find your way out. And ultimately in a context where
they are evolving. That’s the real And it is, we thought about we’re doubling our capacity every
opportunity in this world. So calling it The Lost in the Forest twelve months, that’s what you
Massive Change is built around that Institute, that it would be, there’s really need to develop.

24. THE MOST DANGEROUS THING ON EARTH (AND THE MOST BEAUTIFUL)
This graph (made in November 2003 by The Opte Project) makes visual our radical new
possibility for knowledge. The project’s founder, Barrett Lyon, chief technology officer for
California-based DigiDefense International, wrote a software program with the capacity to map
the entire Internet in a single day, by a single computer. The collected information provides an
analysis of wasted Internet Protocol (IP) space, maps IP distribution, and detects the results of
natural disasters, weather, and war.
The Internet has grown from one website on 1994 to over 1.5 billion today, producing a global
accumulation of knowledge over time.

84 85
 40
Bruce Mau Speaks curated by Gianluca Locatelli

Live Positively: a case of study

transcripted from “What Design Can Do 2017” conference
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFxgqC0Mgtw&t=1068s

“One system...one family...one great community of people who believe they

are part of something larger than themselves.”
- Muhtar Kent

We did a project with Coca-Cola, of massive scale of Coca-Cola to of the people said this should be
probably the world’s greatest imagine a positive future, that we our approach to CSR, to corporate
brand, certainly the most valuable, had an extraordinary opportunity social responsibility, and Muhtar
to galvanize it as an enterprise to introduce sustainability at a -CEO Muhtar Kent- immediately
system to sustainability, to forever, company level to a company that stopped him and said “this is
so that we can have Coca-Cola would actually influence thousands going to change the way that we
in perpetuity. We started with and thousands of companies to do do business for decade to come”.
the concept of… kind of particle the same. This is not about corporate social
of positive energy, and imagine What was for me very exciting is responsibility, I’m personally on
that, if you could capture all that that when we did this project, a campaign to eliminate that idea:
positive energy around the world during the final presentation to the there should not be an office of
and galvanize it and use the kind CEO and the senior executive, one good, unless it’s the CEOs office.

25.

AVOID FIELDS. JUMP FENCES.

Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes
are attempts to control the wilding of creative life.
They are often understandable efforts to order
what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes.
Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.

86 87
 LAUGH
41
People visiting the studio often comment on how
much we laugh. Since I’ve become aware of this,
I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are
expressing ourselves.

25, 26. VISUAL IDENTIY FOR COCA-COLA

For over a century, Coca-Cola has helped
define American culture. Bruce Mau Design
helped them to transform 21st Century
culture through a global sustainability
program: Live Positively. Live Positively
represents Coca-Cola’s commitment to
making a difference in the world through
an environmentally conscious policy that
emphasizes the importance of sustainability
in everything they do. BMD took on the task
of communicating that message to Coca-
Cola’s 700,000 employees and to the world,
creating tools for employee engagement, and
designing an entire visual identity system
across all media. Bruce Mau Design’s efforts
were the first major new element added
to the Coke brand since Elizabeth Arden
designed the dynamic ribbon.

88 89
Stable change
"Design has the potential to make
change understandable and direct,
42
REMEMBER
Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without
memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives
rather than casual and scary. growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect.
Only with design we can strengthen Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a
previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware
stability so that we can still think
of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that
about innovation."
every memory is new, a partial construct different from
its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.
-Bruce Mau

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 43
Prosumer
By Bruce Mau Design

With the proliferation of digital networks the world over, the electronic marketplace has
gone from empowering the consumer to supporting a global civic society.
Power to the people.

The new electronic independence re-creates the world in the image

of a global village.
- Marshall McLuhan

In The Third Wave, Alvin Toffler were already flourishing. civic society is rising up through
predicted the emergence of Indigenous communities have the cracks of corporate
a producing consumer - a proven for thousands of years that globalization. Booker Prize-winning
“prosumer” - out of the transition barter is efficient. author Arundhati Roy addressed
from the Industrial to the Governments commonly barter: the opening Plenary session of the
Information Revolution. Advances India makes exchange agreements World Social Forum in Mumbai
in technology have indeed given with China and Russia for power in January 2004 with this: “...as long
capacity to the consumer. McLuhan plants, heavy machinery, oil, as our ‘markets’ are open,
said the photocopier makes and trucks. Corporations barter, as long as corporations likeEnron,
everyone a publisher. Now, with too -over trillions of dollars’ Bechtel, Halliburton, Arthur
digital video editing software, worth of services: bandwidth, Andersen are given a free hand, our
everyone’s a filmmaker; with Flash, airline seats, hotel rooms. ‘democratically elected’ leaders can
everyone’s an animator; and with Along these same electronic fearlessly blur the lines between
eBay, everyone’s both a buyer circuits, citizens of all nations democracy, majoritarianism,
and a seller. The Information Age are making nonmoney exchange and fascism. Radical change will
has also reintroduced nonmoney agreements towards a unified not be negotiated by governments;
exchange to where markets social economy; a worldwide it can only be enforced by people.”

27. AS EASY AS EBAY. EBay enables the at-home consumer to engage in online barter with a
trading partner anywhere in the world. Everything you could ever wish for, going once, going
twice, sold to the highest bidder.

POWER TO THE PEOPLE

Play can only happen when people feel they have
control over their lives. We can’t be free agents
if we’re not free.

92 93
 Bibliography
Mau B., Maclear K., Lifestyle, Phaidon Press, 2000
Mau B., Massive Change, Phaidon, 2004

Sitography
An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth, Bruce Mau,
http://www.manifestoproject.it/bruce-mau/
Coca-Cola, http://www.brucemaudesign.com/work/
coca-cola
Denver Biennial of the Americas | In Good We Trust,
https://vimeo.com/3073804
EDIT: our story, http://editdx.org /overview/our-story
(last consultation: May 10)
Freeman and Bruce Mau Showcase How Design is
Solving the World's Greatest Problems,
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/
freeman-and-bruce-mau-showcase-how-design-is-

In good we trust
solving-the-worlds-greatest-problems-300527137.
html, 2017
¡GUATEAMALA!, http://www.brucemaudesign.com/
work/ guateamala
"We find ourselves between things. Prosperity for all, http://editdx.org /#experience
(last consultation: June 6)
In transition. We find ourselves asking Simon K., Bruce Mau by Kathryn Simon,
new questions. Questions of purpose. Simon K., Bruce Mau by Kathryn Simon, https://
bombmagazine.org/articles/bruce-mau/
Propelled by these questions we seek (last consultation: June 6)
new possibilities for change. We believe
in the optimism and the sheer massive
potential of the future. We are on the
cusp of a new era. There is a movement
happening powered by our desire for
good. It represents our collective ability
to imagine solutions for a new world.
It represents our collective ability to
invent our future. We will engage in the
great debates of the twenty-first century.
Health, energy, environment, habitat,
economy, education, technology."

-Bruce Mau Design

94 95
Illustrations Credits
Covers, Teresa Zavattiero 14. EDIT: Expo for Design, Innovation and Technology,
1. Bruce Mau (http://www.historygraphicdesign.com/ Toronto 2017 (from https://www.dezeen.
images/0001/N82.png) com/2017/10/05/edit-prosperity-for-all-design-
2. Massive Change, Wealth and Politics Economy Room, exhibition-toronto-tackles-worlds-greatest-
Vancouver Art Gallery problems-bruce-mau/, last consultation: June 6)
(https://d2mdqraew06hxz.cloudfront.net/_
15. Commercial Street In Bangalore, India, from:
eightHundred/mau_01_body.jpg)
3. Jet fuel tank caused by Supertyphoon Pongsone, Perpetual gridlock, Reuters
Apra Harbor, Guam, December 2002 16. Billboards in Broadway, photograph by Darren
4. Bruce Mau’s 24 Principles for Massive Change Barnes, from: https://www.flickr.com/photos/
5. John Cage darrenbarnes/4024696922/in/photolist-MRLyhD-
8. Trasmission towers crushed and power lines downed bzWu6z-78DCbf-79kPj8-783frp
by freezing rain in Boucherville, Québec, January 17, 18. Events for ¡GUATEAMALA!, from: http://www.
1998 (from Mau B., Massive Change, Phaidon, 2004) brucemaudesign.com/work/guateamala
9. Subatomic particle tracks in a bubble chamber at 19, 20. EDIT: Expo for Design, Innovation & Technology,
the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in photographs by Paolo Pellegrin Studio, from:
Batavia, Illinois (from Mau B., Massive Change, https://www.facebook.com/PaoloPellegrin/
Phaidon, 2004) 21. Begin with fact based optimism, November 13, 2015
10. Time made visible: this Hubble Ultra Deep image - Philadelphia Museum of Art - Work on What You
shows galaxies as they were thirteen billion years Love: Bruce Mau Rethinking Design, designed by
ago (from Mau B., Massive Change, Phaidon, 2004) Bruce Mau
11. EDIT: Expo for Design, Innovation and Technology, 22,23. The Many Faces of Earth, NASA Earth
Toronto 2017 (from https://www.canadianarchitect. Observatory Satellite/©JAMSTEC/Earth Simulator
com/features/substantive-edit/attachment/ed- Center (from Mau B., Massive Change, Phaidon, 2004)
letters-to-mayor-edit/, last consultation: June 6) 24. The most dangerous thing on Earth (and the most
12. EDIT: Expo for Design, Innovation and Technology, beautiful), The Internet 2003, http://www.opte.org/
Toronto 2017 (from https://www.bizbash.com/ the-internet/ (from Mau B., Massive Change,
edit-expo-design-innovation-technology-nonprofit- Phaidon, 2004)
museum-design-exchange-kicked/gallery/208649, 25, 26. Visual identity for Coca-Cola, from
last consultation: June 6) http://www.brucemaudesign.com/
13. EDIT: Expo for Design, Innovation and Technology, work/coca-cola
Toronto 2017 (from https://miscmagazine.com/ 27. As easy as EBay, Bruce Mau Design, Inc. (from Mau
paddy-harrington-interview/, last consultation: June 6) B., Massive Change, Phaidon, 2004)

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 PEOPLE

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