It is a challenge when someone asks you to think outside the box, to look at the world around you in ways not thought possible, to find solutions for seemingly unsolvable problems. It means shedding fears, flaunting rules, accepting change. The exhibit, Massive Change: The Future of Global Design, now on view at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), offers just such a challenge. Whether it succeeds in fulfilling its own stated mandate, depends on a number of factors, including the show itself and how it has been presented.

The man behind the show, and very much in its foreground, is graphic designer Bruce Mau, who has become one of our blue globe's eminent graphic designers. His logos are to be found everywhere, all of them emanating from his design studio in Toronto. Mau, however, isn't satisfied with just doing graphic design; he is also busy working in architecture, and landscape design, and who knows, what else this restless, seemingly effervescent man will be up to next. As the curator of Massive Change, which is a collaboration between him, the Institute without Boundaries and the Vancouver Art Gallery, and also involves students from Toronto's George Brown City College, Mau tells us that "[i]n the broadest terms it was conceived as a statement on contemporary design and as a manifesto for its future use."

The exhibit offers narrated commentary as one wanders through the show. Mau reveals in his printed version of the narration, which he mostly executes himself, that he and his collaborators made two decisions that shape this show: "First we decided we would not organize this exhibition based on visual criteria; we would deliberately not consider what design looks like. Instead our principle [sic] concern . . .

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