Life Style [Paperback]

Bruce Mau (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2005

Bruce Mau describes his studio as a "multi-disciplinary think tank where designers, artists and architects, curators, filmmakers and writers collaborate ..." In interviews and in his own writings, Mau rarely alludes overtly to nuts-and-bolts design issues such as typography, page design, color, and proportion. Instead, his work critically engages what he calls the "global image economy": a new world order characterized by the impact of sophisticated reproduction technology, the proliferation of logos and printed advertisements, digitally manipulated imagery, celebrity culture, and electronic commerce, among other late-twentieth-century phenomena. This book begins with a one-page text titled "Styling Life: Declaration," which succinctly defines the firm's approach and includes the statement, "Here we accept the accidents, the encounters, the interruptions and the failures of design practice along with its successes and elations." Daily experience and direct engagement with the often unstable world around us inform his work more so than theory; in effect, design for Mau is something one lives -- a life style -- rather than something one does. Text forms the armature of the book and traverses a variety of subjects germane to contemporary design culture; project documentation is inserted between the essays. The book has a tripartite structure based on the themes Life Theories (essays, credos, declarations), Life Projects (studio work from Bruce Mau Design), and Life Stories (Bruce Mau's personal anecdotes, musings, and reminiscences; memorable moments in his career). The individual texts and project documentation that make up these three sections are interwoven throughout the book instead of falling sequentially in linear fashion. Readers may move, for example, from an essay on typography to a story about meeting John Cage, to a project presentation for Zone Books.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Each day, the average Western citizen sees, assimilates, and recognizes 16,000 logos. Chances are that Bruce Mau has been involved in the creation, evolution, and/or devolution of many of them. But calling Bruce Mau a graphic designer would be akin to calling Mae West a playwright--technically correct, but oh-so-limiting.

This mammoth catalogue raisonné of Mau's graphic work (which only Phaidon Press has the resources, and the patience, to produce) is the much-anticipated follow-up to the 1995 sensation S, M, L, XL that Mau coauthored with renowned Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. Nearly as big, but much more colorful, Life Style offers a compendium of thoughts on the conflicts and conundrums that so perplex concerned aesthetes in Western civilization, including suburban sprawl, ecological threats, the implications of identity creation, and the role of the graphic arts in architecture and design.

Trying to pin down this huge undertaking to only a few highlights would be a disservice to a man who counts such luminaries as Koolhaas, Frank Gehry, John Cage, Michael Snow, Meg Stuart, and Chris Marker as friends and colleagues. The center section alone, which recounts and reprints the celebrated spreads from his publishing venture Zone Books, would be worth the price: "The times were extraordinary--the middle 1980s, the height of American yuppie culture gorging itself on wealth. The Macintosh computer had only just been introduced and was making itself felt in the world of typography by virtue of its capacity to distort fonts. It would eventually transform the field of design, disseminating expertise and clustering capacities vertically. Faxes and FedEx were making possible a new level of international collaboration that would soon put a Toronto designer at the center of a transatlantic project. That project was Zone."

The collaboration at Zone Books enabled some of the most provocative book projects ever seen, and they are reproduced faithfully in Life Style (although one might need a magnifying glass to get the most out of them). Zone was the first and most satisfying of Mau's team projects, and the pleasure of its success is apparent in the book. But readers will find much more of interest documented here, including his revolutionary stint at I.D. Magazine; his brilliant realization of a book version of the underground, classic sci-fi thriller "La Jetée"; and his ideas for information interchange at several major architectural projects, including right here in Seattle, working with his friend Koolhaas in building the controversial new Seattle Public Library.

All things considered, this major book will leave some readers furious at Bruce Mau's audacity and others aghast at his cross-disciplinary influences. I doubt that there's anyone working in design today who has had quite his impact. This book is a beautifully realized celebration of that impact, and very much worth the wait.

By the way, Phaidon has produced this book with eight different and gorgeous fabric covers. Yours might differ from our rather inadequate representation on the site. As with S, M, L, XL, I predict that some day all of them will be (ahem) "coollectors'" items. --Charles Decker --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 638 pages
• Publisher: Phaidon Press (March 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0714845205
• ISBN-13: 978-0714845203
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 8.2 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #171,212 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thoughtful and imaginative, August 12, 2001

By 

Philippe Vandenbroeck (HEVERLEE, BELGIUM) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Life Style (Hardcover)

Working as a management consultant I'm often turned off by the staleness of much of the current management literature. The design community is a much more sensitive antenna as to what is happening in the world today.

Bruce Mau's Life Style is an imaginative survey of how the world is being transformed under the inexorable impetus of global capitalism. It is not a dispassionate account: basically Mau is trying to show us how he is dealing with a very fundamental existential dilemma. Because, as a successful designer, Mau is part of the system - developing and spreading the lingua franca of a global economy. At the same time he is rebelling against the pervasive homogenisation of our image culture: "We should not forget that the com after the dot is short for commercial. Must we define every gesture and possibility within this envelope? Is it not our role to imagine new futures more rich and complex and wild in their style than any single framework can accomodate?"

Yhe book is a captivating mix of artwork and short insightful essays. Sanford Kwinter's introductory three-page essay alone is worth the price of the book. I gather this book will be very influential in the years to come.

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars oma envy, or bruce erases rem's name (again), July 30, 2001

By 

richard winchell (Vancouver + San Francisco) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Life Style (Hardcover)

Here's the thing: Bruce Mau is a very good designer. His office turns out a lot of very refined objects, this monograph included. That said, this book is probably twice as big as it ought to be. It seems to me as though BMD wants to be more like OMA; "S,M,L,XL" was one of the best architectural books ever, and its heft reinforced the work being shown within it. "Life Style" is just big for the sake of being big. Well, as well as being self-indulgent. Because graphic designers are not asked to be deep thinkers, and most of their attempts at same do not fare very well. Bruce Mau really wants to be considered as an equal to the deep thinkers, and he just isn't. He's just a (very) good designer.

Buy it anyway. It's got too much good work inside to ignore, but keep some salt handy.

(p.s. indigo.ca was allowing people to choose their cover; they may still be doing that)

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Overproduced, January 11, 2001

By 

Max Fenton (Charlottesville, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Life Style (Hardcover)

The Bruce Mau Life Style clearly intends to brand the man behind the firm, thought the work is a corporate product. The Romantic artis-genius may be dead, but the irony of the book is its insistence on Bruce Mau as just that.

The inspirational tome (or semi-manifesto) is a beautiful object on par with the Tolleson book (Soak Wash Rinse Spin) and leagues beyond Cahan's I Am Almost Always Hungry.

In all, this is an overhyped, well-made product, worth seeing/having as an object of production.