Bruce Mau's Book "Lifestyle" raises vital and controversial issues related to our design culture, photography, consumerism, etc.

Bruce Mau has a very conscious and intellectual approach to design. It's not too technical, and he provides a very readable and understandable explanation to his approach, which also reaches beyond just design issues, but more of the state of civilization in the 21st century.

Structured in a playful manner, his has critical statements about the visual and cultural trends that influence today's society. He challanges �global image economy�: a new world order characterized by the impact of sophisticated reproduction technology and by the proliferation of logos, printed advertisements, digitally manipulated imagery, celebrity culture, and electronic commerce.

This book is an attempt to wrest back that term from its current status as the marketing stategy of choice for high end products and to invest the relationship between the words 'life' and 'style' with new meaning.

Jean-Luc Godard's believed that 'style is merely the outside of content, and content the inside of style', Mau posits that life is to be seen not as something which happens to us or independent of our actions, but rather something we create, through the choices we make. Thus, adding 'style' to our life is a philosophical project of the highest order. This idea and its relation to the practice of Bruce Mau Design's studio is explored and revealed in the form of a manifesto, essays, images, cultural criticism, a retrospective and analysis of the firm's projects.

Life Style proposes in its place a rigorous intellectual approach to the culture of the image - postponing judgment and accepting a complex, problematic debate. "The global image economy is basically an inventory of techniques and forces of the image", Mau explains. "In a certain way we are moving to a culture of the image that is a much more primitive culture in that it works directly on the ancient nervous system". Without a sophisticated awareness of the techniques being used to manipulate us we are "doomed to a life of decorating and redecorating".

Given a western world in which we each visually assimilate 16,000 logos per day and daily broadcast 12,000 hours of television programming vying for our attention, images are unnavoidable and pervasive. The new image infrastructure is a fact of life which cries out for the sort of intelligent engagement Mau proposes.