Hamish Muir

Today we had a really interesting talk from Hamish Muir, Co-founder of the design company 8vo. He started the company with fellow designers Mark Holt and Simon Johnston but they left to go their own ways quite a while ago now. It was a really inspiring talk as i really like his work and his way of working. He gave us an insight into the way he works and used to work before he used computers. There were a few main points that i will take from the talk and use in my own practice and approach to work. Possibly the best piece of 'advice' that he gave was that it's not important to always have the biggest and best idea ever as it's never possible to have that! Instead, a simple idea that solves the problem well is a lot better. This is great as i have gone through almost all of my education so far worrying about whether my idea is the best and it has been one of my biggest fears when showing my work to others. Hopefully, this will no longer be the case, as long as i can find a way of solving the problem instead. The next pointer he gave that will help me greatly was more of a comment on the way that he works rather than 'advice' was that he realised that he had to use the computer as a tool rather than a solution. The last of the main points he gave was another comment on the way that he works which is to set up some 'rules' to abide by for each piece of design. You could see where he had set these rules in his own design, whether it be a type face or a poster and it really seemed to work. It allowed him to be more free with what he was doing as he didn't have to worry about having aspects of the design all sorts of sizes and having to worry about the asthetics of things as the rules kept had already defined what size things had to be etc. All in all, it was a truly inspiring lecture and i will definately be using the points he gave in my approach to design no matter what the piece is.