U x U Festival
Bruce Mau Design

As one of the largest cities in Sweden, Umeå will make history in the summer of 2014 hosting the first annual UxU Music Festival (Umeå by you). The festival runs on a unique crowd sourcing model where fans become contributors as they sign up; rallying others to join to make the festival even bigger.

The design system needed to mirror this idea. We established a concept where U's are a container for people. No 'U' ever being the same. A system that encourages the crowd to be creative and make their own 'U's.

The project was lead by a swedish designer from Umeå named Håkan Gustafson. Working with Håkan was great as we both shared the vision of a design system, and design world, that breaks all the rules. He was really the force behind this great work. I just made krunk U's.



This U was a combination of all my
U's at the end of a shoot; doused
in lighter fluid and lit on fire.






Flower U Photoshop composition




Made up of dollar store animals
and dinosaur figurines.





The tin foil wrapper from some bagels
I brought into work. One of the senior
staff at Bruce Mau Design ate the bagel
and claimed all food in the kitchen is
free game. Ridiculous.






Took a photo of my top dog
Mike Dudek's long white arms
and turned them into this U






Another dollar store find with
a Google hot dog. I really dug
into my american dual citizenship
to create this beauty.






Bought these glowsticks at the
local dollarama, snapped em
and photographed them in
the mens bathroom.




Soaked some heavy twine in
hot water for a few hours. Made
a perfectly malleable substance.






Googled ice, photoshopped it,
slapped on some icicles and
called er a day.





Caution tape U. One of those
things that if you have a roll of it,
it's weirdly hard to throw away;
regardless of the fact that you've
never used it.




Kyosuke Nishida with his showstopper U. Made totally out of paper.