Mau is the latest film about Bruce Mau the brilliant graphic designer, innovator, and educator. Mau is the founder of Bruce Mau Designs and the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Massive Change Network (MCN) a global design consultancy based in Chicago. Mau has wowed audiences with his projects and attention to creativity and riveting detail. He gained tremendous success for his many published works including The Incomplete Manifesto for Growth and is one of the authors behind S, M, L, XL. Mau’s innovative designs have taken him to great heights working with leading companies such as Coca-Cola, MTV, MetlLife Stadium, and Netflix. In a brief phone interview with the directors behind the project, brothers Benjamin and Jono Bergman discussed collaborating with him on this latest documentary.
Kristin: Why center this movie around Bruce and what really drew you guys into making a film about him?
Benji: So I met Bruce. But a couple of years ago I was working at the United Nations at the time and Bruce came in, actually, I brought Bruce in to speak to a group of communications directors at the UN and we started and it was very inspiring obviously. And it was, it started was the beginning of I guess a relationship or working relationship. And at the time I really thought to myself like, well, I’d really love to explore this character further in a documentary. And a couple of years ago, John and I went to South by Southwest, the film festival, and Bruce was a keynote speaker there. And after his talk, we sat down with him and he basically told him or proposed that we start working on a documentary. And that was kind of how the project began.
Jono: Coincidentally or incidentally, we have actually premiered the film at South by Southwest.
Kristin: I saw that. So that must have been epic. So that was like a full-circle moment!
Jono: Exactly. And my brother (Benji) had told me about Bruce when he was working at the UN and we’d sort of been tracking him and it was sort of where we were at South by Southwest for something completely different. So it was a complete coincidence that he was there and there was this person my brother had spoken about and I wanted to meet him and that’s how it started. And this is the first documentary that we did together. This is our debut feature. So this is the first sort of what also started my working relationship with Benji as brothers, which has been very exciting and sort of to take your answer a little bit further on, why, why Bruce, Benji, and I felt it was a person who saw the world or sees the world, I should rather say, differently than most other people we’ve ever met. His optimistic outlook on life, on the world, on the state of affairs, his belief that everything can be designed, and that sort of his methodology of optimism was something we wanted to explore and bottle and it was a point of inquiry and something to sort of investigating as filmmakers and to bring to an audience.
Benji: The film is about Bruce, but it’s about much more than Bruce. It’s about, on the one hand, the character that this might be repeating what Joel said, but a character who sees the world through a very, very unique vantage point and who sees everything through this prism of design, which is a very interesting, interesting kind of way to explore the world, to see the world. And on the other hand, like about his ideas and principles and methodologies and yeah, so something more than just the character of the person, Bruce Mau.
Kristin: That’s the great thing about this film is that going in I had no idea who Bruce was as a person or even as a designer. So, I love the fact that you two were able to bring this person to life, to the screen, and really get audiences to know him because he’s just a fascinating individual. What has been your favorite work of Bruce’s because he has accomplished so much in his career?
Jono: I think our favorite project that he’s worked on was the project of, let’s say, bottling up for four years of experience into these principles that you see in the film. I think that in and of itself and Bruce’s work, what we’ve come to understand from exploring a film, making a film for the last three or four years, is that Bruce’s work is really about empowerment and it’s really about putting tools in the hands of other people. And I think that project in and of itself is stealing these ideas from these projects, ranging from Guatemala to Mecca to working with brands, not being scared to touch companies like Coca-Cola, working on all these things. And then at the end of this, at this stage of his career, saying okay, this isn’t about me, I want to bottle this up into tools that are actionable for everyone. And everyone is really the key thing. You said you’ve never heard of Bruce I think most people have never heard of Bruce. This is not a documentary about a famous designer that you should have heard about. It’s really about a character and his methodologies and his philosophy. And so at any point, we were working, it was really about making this film accessible to a wider audience in a design community.
Benji: Yeah, I think that John and I both we’re not designers, our backgrounds are not necessarily in design. So, for us, as Bruce says, you know, this is his methodology and is designed for non-designers. So really the film was yeah as Jono said it was our target audience was not necessarily. In the niche of his design, it’s not aficionados who know and love his work, but rather people who have never come into contact with him. And these principles are for everyone, as you say, for designers and for non-designers.
Kristin: So let’s get to know you guys more as filmmakers. What inspires you both as filmmakers?
Jono: I think that as filmmakers, we don’t have we try to, we have a very eclectic taste. Our interests are varied and so I think that for us it’s always been important to see and to work on a lot of different topics. I would say, eclectic tastes and interests. We made a film in the last two years about a Canadian designer, about a German/international financial fraud. We made a document, a World War Two animated history documentary, but I think that what interests us as filmmakers is finding the right way to tell these real stories. I think we’re very interested in character-focused stories, characters with journeys interest us, inspire us, or make us question in some ways how we live and how we interact in our world. And I think it’s as filmmakers, a challenge of really not imposing for us, not imposing a specific style, but saying what, what is the style or what is the form we need to find for this specific story? What is the medium we need to find for this particular message or this particular story.
Mau is available to watch on video on demand.
