Bruce Mau, designer and activist, is the class of 2025 commencement speaker. Invited to teach at Arizona State University by President Tepper when he was a Dean at ASU, Mau commented on his longstanding relationship with Tepper. When invited to speak at Hamilton, Mau tried to answer the question, “what is the role of design in in our lives?”
Mau reflected on how his unique childhood growing up on a farm outside of a mining town in Canada led him to a career in design. Mau reminisced on how his house did not have running water, so he would often be tasked with filling up barrels from the local well. While the first time he ever left his town was when he went to college, Mau was eager to explore outside of his rural bubble. “Growing up, I thought, I’m going to get out of here and I’m going to do other things,” Mau remarked. His life changed with an “extraordinary event on television called Expo 67.”
Mau described how the Montreal world fair inspired him through the works of designers like Buckminster Fuller, creator of the Montreal Biosphere, an environmental museum. Watching the Expo was the “first kind of inkling that there was another world out there.” Mau quickly decided he would pivot from studying technology to studying art.
Mau shared how he fell in love with design in high school, “and didn’t want to do anything else after that.” He attended college “for only a year and a half.” Mau explained, “I just didn’t know how to behave there. I didn’t know how it worked. I frankly still don’t.”
Following his passions led to him learning a new language and receiving a job doing what he loved. However, Mau had doubts over whether his college experience was worthwhile. “For the longest time, up until really, like, two or three years ago, I thought that I failed university, but I realized recently that I just did it more quickly than others…I was on my way to an absolutely extraordinary adventure,” said Mau. “I can’t recommend a life of design highly enough because it is a life of learning,” he continued.
Mau’s passion for design permeates his Incomplete Manifesto for Growth, which consists of 43 mini-philosophies. When asked for the most important takeaways for Hamilton students, Mau expounded on three pieces of advice. “Power to the people,” the final tenet on his list, is about recognizing that every person has influence. Mau attests “that most of us don’t realize how powerful we are. We have the capacity to shape the world…We have the kind of mechanism that almost no other species has, that we can actually envision the future and share the vision.”
Number 17 “_____________” (intentionally left blank) is one of Mau’s personal favorites, “because it it acknowledges what we don’t know yet.” He emphasizes the importance of leaving oneself open to possibility and new ideas.
Finally, Mau pulled from the MC24, his book on “principles for designing Massive Change in your life and work.” “Work on what you love,” Mau advised, “What you do is really critical, because you’ve got a whole life ahead of you and it’s longer than ever before.”
Mau noted that he hadn’t had a chance to speak with Hamilton students yet, but he looks forward to coming to campus to speak to the student body. He will touch on themes of design, its intersection with higher education and its ability to enact change in the world.