Hamish Muir Lecture

"All designers have some sort of OCD"

On the first of December not only did we have one lecture but two! The first lecture was by Hamish Muir, a graphic designer and founding principal of 8VO. I didn't really know what to expect as I hadn't heard or researched into his work. If I'm totally honest I really didn't like most of the stuff he showed us. The catalogue and flyers he designed for the museum were interesting and I thought that these were the best pieces he showed us throughout the lecture.

He mentioned that his way of working was to cut and paste and to actually make the pieces in the actual size that they would eventually be. This is one of the only things I could relate to within the lecture as this is the way in which I like to work.

Mark Holt and Simon Johnston were also the founders of 8VO and together they designed identities, print, publishing and information design. They also designed record sleeves which was also one other thing i could relate to as I'm studying it for my essay. Hamish explained that they preferred doing the back of the album cover rather than the front as they wouldn't have to worry if the artist would like it or not.

I understand that design is appealing to people in different ways, but my personal opinion on the work he showed was not to my taste. I found the colours to be quite sickly, and in your face, and at times there was too much going on. I noted down in my book that I didn't think I would look twice at some of the posters he had designed, although they are colourful and attention grabbing they don't appeal to me at all. I thought some of them were quite horrible looking!

There were few pieces that did appeal to me, and this was only because there was lack of colour in them. The more subtle pieces with less colour, I felt worked better than the others. I also found the work in Octavo to be nicely designed and appealing. Over all I was glad I went to the lecture, but didn't find his work to be personally interesting to me. I spoke to other people and they found it to be interesting and liked his work, showing that design is seen differently to everyone, and that taste in design is also varied.