Hamish Muir, Looking Back

Hamish Muir

A prime example of a Process/ logical designer, but certainly not one that lacked imagination, he was taught by Wolfgang and Hoffmen during his time at the Basel school of design in Switzerland, so you can see why! Something of an old school legend, Muir gave us a fascinating incite into the vast changes that hit Graphic design, with the introduction of computers and what it is that must not be forgotten from the old handmade days! He talked a lot about his collective 8vo which he formed with Mark Holt and Simon Jenkins who was already working on Factory records! The name formed from the fact that when you fold paper 3 times to make a book its called an octavo! He talked of the collage and photographic methods in which the group worked, highlighting that it was a real collaboration within their ‘workshop’ with some heated debates! It would take them up to two weeks to produce a single Hacienda poster! They decided to produce ‘Octavo’ an international journal of typography with an issue every 6 months (or as close as they could afford). He talked about their experimental approach to producing the issues and it has since really encouraged me with my own magazine collective that a group of us are developing!

He also encouraged me to be less worried about following paths into print, as he describes the irony of one Octavo issue containing a digital format that can no longer be read by modern computers and so is lost! “As operating systems change, as software changes, work is lost. Print exists in time and space and can only be physically destroyed.”  He described the introduction of computers as suddenly allowing them to do anything, yet “when you can do anything, you often make a mess”. This also strung accord with me, because this is something I find within my digitally produced work, without the restraints of process and materials, I find having limited restraints does sometimes water down my work. He also re-iterated what Mack had previously said, which was that if you are going to work with print, to do it at scale as the screen often lies, again I have begun to follow this advice and created physical mock ups and work in progress. I should perhaps push this further with more finished, to scale, versions so I can see clearly how the elements of the piece will work.

8vo’s work with William Crouwel, the director of the museum in Rotterdam really caught my interest. He explained that the curators for each exhibit were their clients as oppose to Crouwel himself and that 8vo changed their approach depending on the audience. The designs were formed from what was there, in response to the brief, the budget, the print and the technical constraints. They produced 40 posters and 50 catalogues over 5 years. Designing for museums and art galleries is an area I would like to explore more as I think its method and content may be of real interest to me.

Muir although very much the logical designer who firmly believes that “content has to communicate”, admits that he sometimes enjoys the asthetic alone. He produces work as a hobby that changes the physical forms of lettering, playing with what the eye and the brain makes up for, the gaps which we fill in. This idea of filling in what is not their due to our expectations, is of a similar theme to explorations of my own in the project ‘silence’ and within ‘Panic’. Trust me to relate to the one bit of emotional design Muir talked about!