Hamish Muir

Today we had a lecture from the typographer Hamish Muir. I wasn't aware of his work until I heard about the talk, but after getting a bit of last minute research in (basically in the half hour before the talk) I found I did recognise some of his design. I must admit, I wasn't overly keen on most of his work, but still tried to keep an open mind. I must say I was quite pleasantly suprised with the lecture, I found it quite interesting. These are the notes I took;

• Bournemouth College of Art, 1975 - 1976
• Bath academy of Art, 1976 - 1979
• Basel School of Design, 1980 - 1981
• Moved to London in 1985, started the company 8vo with two others.
• As a collective they treated type as image, all in the days before computers were used for design. They designed everything by hand, layering up paper until it was sometimes 20 sheets thick.
• The company name, 8vo, came from the printing term 'octavo'.
• The most important lesson Muir learned was to always work full size.
• You don't always have to have 'big ideas'. Small ideas/responses often work the best.
• Unica, typeface commissioned by Haas. Mix of Univers and Helvetica.
• As a company they created the Octavo International Journal of Typography, which was a very limited edition series of 8 journals, some of which cost up to £200 for an issue.
• Muir regards Wim Crouwel as being the best typographer ever.