Born in Paisley, Scotland, 1957, Muir studied Visual Communication at Bath Academy of Art (Corsham) (1976-79) and on the course for Advanced Graphic Design at the Allgemeine Kunstgewerbeschule in Basel (1980-81) where he was taught by André Gürtler, Kurt Hauert, Armin Hofmann and Wolfgang Weingart
In 1985 Muir co-founded the London-based design practice 8vo with Mark Holt and Simon Johnston with whom he was co-editor of Octavo journal of typography (1986-1992)
Since the closure of 8vo in 2001, Muir has combined work as an independent graphic design consultant specialising in editorial, information and systems design, with teaching part-time at the London College of Communication
In 2010, Hamish Muir and Paul McNeil established MuirMcNeil Design Systems, a project based collaborative focussed on exploring parametric visual systems in design