Canadian designer Bruce Mau's ideas are as arresting as his visual products. "All forms are in a state of temporary instability," he once wrote. This is no idle philosophy-it is an engine of creativity. For the Netherlands Architecture Institute, Mau created a template upon which other designers could elaborate. His alphabet for the Walt Disney Concert Hall merges fixed fonts into dynamic new forms. As designer and coproducer of Rem Koolhaas' celebrated S,M,L,XL, he unleashed "a free-fall in the space of the typographic imagination" that rivaled the audacity of the Dutch architect's ideas. As design director of the seminal Zone book series, he turned type into virtual animation. These works have been instrumental in raising the profile of the designer in the process of cultural production.

Since founding his studio in 1985, Mau has employed his vision in the service of an ambitiously wide-ranging set of enterprises across various media. These enterprises range from serving as creative director of I.D. Magazine to collaborations with Claes Oldenburg and with institutions such as the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and the Getty Center in Los Angeles.

Mau's other projects include the new identity for the Museum of Antwerp, the conceptual programming for Tulane University's new museum in New Orleans, and a book on design culture. His images and ideas continue to provoke thought and eschew the comfort of convention. "I'm more comfortable with being a designer," says Mau, "because I'm in no danger of becoming a designer."