Hamish Muir

"Design is all about content, but sometimes it's nice to work on something that has no content at all."

Continuing our lecture series Hamish Muir came in to talk to us yesterday, giving us an overview of his design career. Hamish was very detailed in his explanation about his career and it was good to hear about the process he went through when starting out. As one of the founders of '8vo' Hamish talked about the work they did there and the processes they had to go through, working with type and type based design. The 8vo studio was classed as a workshop and not an office because it was the place where all the work was created. The team (Hamish, Mark Holt and Simon Johnston) all worked together, no single one of them had an idea it was about them talking and discussing their ideas and development that made their work successful.

It was really interesting to see how design work was produced before 'Macs,' as they worked at full scale with real hand set type and collages and had to photograph each stage of the design to record developments and ideas as there was no way to 'save' it like we do nowadays. I think it was the hand rendered process of the work at 8vo what really made them successful as they were involved in every little change in the design as they had to physically do it themselves and couldn't just go to the computer - as Hamish said "the computer is in control of us, rather than us in control of the computer." - it allows you to do anything you want which isn't always a good thing. I totally agree with this as sometimes the quality of a hand rendered piece of work cannot be reached by a computer and it is that attention to detail of working the piece yourself that can really make it. One piece of 8vo work that really stood out to me was a cd cover (top left on the image below) which was built up in layers, using glass to carefully and precisely place each element and see through all the layers. I thought this was a great process and sort of takes photoshop into the real world with the idea of working with different layers of materials.

I personally liked the initial work produced by 8vo much more and although the whole range of work was very inspiring I felt the later work produced on the computer took away some of the detail that hand rendered work produces.

Below are some posters produced for The Hacienda nightclub. It was great to hear about the printing processes involved and the clever attention to detail such as making the poster below glow in the dark as it was for a nightclub.

Octavo: International Journal of Typography

A journal existing of 7 issues first printed in 1986, with the content of each dictating the layout. Print designs are something that really stand out to me and in my own work I enjoy producing layouts with typography. I liked the idea the Octavo was only 7 issues, the final issue was a cd/digital issue which can no longer be viewed because technology has advanced so much the software needed to view it no longer exists. I really like the idea of this as no one can ever view this piece now and Octavo has become 'extinct.' As Hamish said. " print exists in physical time and space, it will always be there unlike digital work which needs to be constantly updated." I really agree with this as there is something about being able to touch and feel a piece of design work rather than just look at it on screen, maybe thats the designer element in me!

I found Hamish's talk really inspiring and his earlier work at 8vo really appealed to me, and it has made me want to step back from the computer and produce more hand crafted work like I did on my foundation course. I think the LBi brief I have been working on has allowed me to do this, and printing processes such as letterpress and screen printing really do have that added quality that a computer cannot achieve.