Max Bruinsma


Max Bruinsma is a Dutch design critic, editor, curator, and educator.

Career

After studying Art and Design History in Groningen and Amsterdam, Bruinsma worked as Editor-in-Chief of the Dutch design magazine :nl:Items, Tijdschrift voor vormgeving|Items from 1988–89, and Senior editor from 1992-97. He then was Editor of Eye, a London-based international graphic design quarterly, from 1997–99. He returned as Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of Items from 2009-13. Bruinsma has contributed to many other design publications including ID, Blueprint, The AIGA Journal, Étappes, and Form, published the book Deep Sites – Intelligent Innovation in Contemporary Webdesign with Thames & Hudson in 2003 and has been the Editor of several books.
The Pierre Bayle Prize for design criticism was awarded to Bruinsma in 2005.
He was curator of many exhibitions, among which "Catalysts! The cultural force of communication design" as part of Lisbon design biennial "ExperimentaDesign 2005" and "Useless?" for "ExperimentaDesign 2011". Between 2005 and 2013 he also was a member of ExperimentaDesign's international editorial advisory board.
Bruinsma worked as a lecturer and Visiting Professor at schools world-wide. In 2005, he co-founded the Master's course Editorial Design at the Graduate School of Art and Design, HKU Utrecht School of the Arts. From 2013-15 he was course director of this course. He was also Core Tutor at the Graphic design Masters program at St. Joost Academy of the Arts and a Core Tutor and Thesis Advisor for MIARD at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam. He is currently Core Tutor Transmedia Narratives at Camera Arts, at the Lucerne School of Art and Design. He is also editor of the yearly video portraits of NOMIS Distiguished Scientist Awards, Zürich, Switzerland.