Bruce Mau

Bruce Mau is no stranger to the big cities of the world. As chief design officer of Freeman, one of the world’s largest brand-experience companies, and co-founder/CEO of Massive Change Network (MCN), a Chicago-based global design consultancy, he has long applied the power of design to transforming the world. However, the circumstances of Mau’s early life contrast starkly with his cosmopolitan career, and the wilderness of his childhood still informs the way he works today.

“Where I grew up in the Canadian north, our home was the last farm on a road into the boreal wilderness. Beyond, the forest stretched for hundreds of miles. If you lost your way out there, the chances of survival were minimal. I developed an intuitive way of reading the landscape that allowed me to hike for days and find my way home by tracking the sun and numbering geographical features as I went,” he explains.

“The moment of facing and mastering an existential threat defines the mind-set of the entrepreneurial designer,” Mau says. “As designers, we must go beyond the grid, we must venture beyond the mapmakers to where new possibilities are growing.”