incomplete manifesto for growth by Bruce Mau

incomplete manifesto for growth by Bruce Mau

Bruce Mau is the Chief Creative Officer of Bruce Mau Design. He proves that the power of design is boundless, and has the capacity to bring positive change on a global scale.

my mantra of the week...

{ allow events to change you } 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.


I promise i read the entire list... its just coincidence i liked the first one best. This one really struck me because its a great rule for design but also for life in general. In graphics we are constantly running around coming up with creative solutions to problems only to be told (most of the time) to improve on it. Being told this repeatedly gets tiring, or maybe were just sleep deprived. Its easy to get upset and stressed along the way but being open to any suggestions and accepting the fact that we are here to improve is vital to growing not only as a designer but as a person. No one is here because they know everything there is to know about graphic design. We are all learning from each other. Staying positive and open to change will only lead to better design.



the others that struck me...



2. Forget about good.
Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you'll never have real growth.

3. 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.

4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child).
Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.

12. Keep moving.
The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.

15. Ask stupid questions.
Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.

16. Collaborate.
The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.

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

24. Avoid software.
The problem with software is that everyone has it.

25. Don’t clean your desk.
You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.

32. Listen carefully.
Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.

33. 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.

35. 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.

41. Laugh.
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.

43. 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.