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?Make things as beautiful as possible, wealth will follow?

BY VICKI GILHULA [email protected] Bruce Mau Design has provided visual corporate identities for clients such as the Art Gallery of Ontario, Roots, and Indigo Books. These identities or Â?brandingÂ? make them stand out in the marketplace.
BY VICKI GILHULA

Bruce Mau Design has provided visual corporate identities for clients such as the Art Gallery of Ontario, Roots, and Indigo Books.

These identities or Â?brandingÂ? make them stand out in the marketplace. In the same way, it can be argued, Bruce Mau, the son of a Sudbury miner, has created his own identity. And why not?

MauÂ?s business card lists him as chairman (as in Chairman Mao) of Bruce Mau Design, not president or CEO.

Every article written about Mau mentions the way he dresses. He favours black, loose Oriental-cut shirts worn outside black or tan pants, and running shoes. What may have started out as comfort has become his signature look.

Gerald Hannon, writing in 1998 for Toronto Life, said Mau was dressed in black, loose-fitting garments every time they met. That was eight years ago, and one wonÂ?t find a photograph of him wearing anything else let alone a suit or tie.

This is from the Oct. 8, 2004 edition of Newsweek, Â?Bruce Mau is a quietly charismatic man of 45 who dresses in pajama-esque black, looks like a slightly svelter Orson Welles and talks as rapidly as a high-end computer salesman. MauÂ?yes, pronounced Â?MaoÂ?Â?doesnÂ?t seem like a revolutionary.Â?

Then there is the Slinky thing. Articles about Mau always mention he played with a SlinkyÂ?that coiled toyÂ?during the interview. ItÂ?s as if he knows reporters are generally lazy and will make a big deal out of a little thing like his Slinky. And heÂ?s right.

If Mau can brand himself as a big, but brilliant bad boy in Chinese silk pajamas, and convince a country, Guatamala, to hire his firm to give it a new identity, what would he do with his hometown?

MASSIVE CHANGE: The exhibit will be mounted at the Art Gallery of Ontario in March, then moves on to Chicago.
Â?I think it would be incredibly challenging to think about it,Â? he says.

Mau advises those involved in the branding process to figure out what the identity is going to be.

Â?What are we going to do that we identify as something positive in the worldÂ?not only what we are going to communicate about. That is not what
branding is about. Branding is about making the image consistent with the practice,Â? he says.

ThereÂ?s no easy answer for a community with a harsh geography, tough industry, and a reputation for being a moonscape.

MauÂ?s new book on Massive Change, published in connection with the exhibition on the future of design currently on at the Vancouver Art Gallery, has a chapter on Jamie Lerner, a city planner and former mayor of Curitiba, Brazil.

Â?Sudbury should bring him up and talk to him about how to plan the city,Â? says Mau.

Lerner was the chief architect of the cityÂ?s master plan and served as mayor for 12 years before becoming state governor.

He improved the transit system, created incentives for recycling, and turned the downtown into a pedestrian mall.

Â?He figured how to build a mass transit system that has the efficiency of a subway for boarding. He can move the same number of people a subway can at one-hundredth of the cost by using buses.Â?

Lerner also created green areas that were protected from future development and a series of parks dedicated to the cityÂ?s different ethnic groups.

Curitiba has been described as a showplace for urban planning and is known for its achievements in urban revitalization and innovation.

In the last decade, the city of 1.8 million has invested in cultural sites, a botanical garden and an opera house located on the site of an abandoned quarry. At the same time, it has attracted new industry including Renault, Audi/Volkswagen and Chrysler.

Â?Wealth follows beauty,Â? says Mau.

Â?Rich people want to live in beautiful places. By making things as beautiful as possible, wealth will follow.Â?

In the future, SudburyÂ?s setting and improving beauty will be a big attraction, he says. Â?That environment, the northern experience, the solitudeÂ?the fact you can be on a lake without seeing people is going to have more value. There is a huge global potential for this as an experience.Â?

Mau suggests the city figure out what is unique about it and capitalize on that. It is not about shopping experiences.

Â?I think of Sudbury as starting at the (downtown) coreÂ?going out from thereÂ?from the historical centre. Then you have to develop and build on that distinction with cultureÂ?food, music and artÂ?These things will set the place apart from other places.Â?

Unfortunately, he admits that unless there are places for creative thinkers to make a living here, they will move to places where they can.

Â?The very people that would build that cultural infrastructure have gone away, and you have to think about how to bring them back and keep them
here.Â?

When politicians and activists talk about the brain drain and out-migration, they are talking about Mau. He represents all the smart, talented people who grew up in Greater Sudbury but moved away for their careers.

What would the community be like if Mau, described by many as a Â?design revolutionary,Â? had stayed in Sudbury? Would people here think his ideas were too crazy, too big, too expensive, or too impossible?

Some community leaders are planning to meet with Mau next month in Toronto to talk about the future of Sudbury. Stay tuned.

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