Sidebar: Changing Identity

Bruce Mau Design has created the visual identity for institutions like the Netherlands Architecture Institute, in Rotterdam, and Indigo, a Canadian chain of book and music stores. For one client, BMD set expiration dates for the signage and other materials, so that the client would be perceived as perpetually fresh. Mau explains the new split personality of corporate identity:

"In the days when designers like Paul Rand were creating logos for IBM and for Westinghouse, corporate identity was about fixing a position. You wanted to communicate stability. In the current climate, you have to engineer two vectors -- one of stability and one of change -- simultaneously. Madonna is a classic example. She engineers transformations. The person and the music stay pretty stable, but the image changes. And because it changes, you see it again. If she stayed the same, people would move on.

"You can't stabilize or else you disappear. Companies producing change are the only ones that you see in the marketplace -- whether it's technological change, programmatic change, or territorial change. Corporate identity has to communicate that."

Sidebar: When to Say No to a Client

Bruce Mau Design Inc. is almost entirely free of regimentation. Its managers do have one system, though, which they use to decide whether to take on a project. "Our work defines who we are, so we like to choose our projects in a considered way," says Bruce Mau. Below, he describes his "Four Ps" checklist.

1. People: "Every project boils down to spending time with the client. If its people are good, you can overcome any problem. If they're bad, every problem will seem twice as big."
2. Project: "Is the project adventurous? Would it provide new opportunities for learning?" BMD doesn't do any marketing, so its body of work attracts new clients. Knowing that, Mau and his team are reluctant to do work in industries or domains that they think are creative dead ends.
3. Profit: "We need to make money on everything that we do in order to sustain the business, whether it's a project for an art gallery or a multinational corporation."
4. Plate: "How much do we have on our plate?" BMD has only 20 full-time employees, and a tight network of freelancers and contractors. Mau is wary of trying to expand the size of his firm too quickly; he thinks carefully about how new work will affect the group.