Thursday, September 22, 2011

Week 2 - Olly Moss

Olly Moss
Star Wars movie posters

Olly Moss is an illustrator and graphic designer from the UK. I chose him because of his unique style and because he frequently designs things that interest me - political posters, retro re-designs of video game covers, and these Star Wars movie posters. Each poster has an outline of a character, then on the inside it depicts an iconic scene while using the environment to give greater detail to the character outline. The characters and scenes he picks are iconic to each film. It's so simple yet ingenious. "Star Wars: A New Hope" features C3P0 as the character and the famous Tatooine double sunset as the scene. "The Empire Strikes Back" shows Cloud City which makes up the visor for the bounty hunter Boba Fett. Lastly, the "Return of The Jedi" poster has the forest moon of Endor's tree branches twisted to form the details of Darth Vader's helmet.  

Most of his other work is similar to this. He uses subtle details and a minimalistic approach to most of his work. His work is generally flat looking and usually is used in print like these movie posters, band posters, magazine illustrations, and print ads. His work is very clean and he sometimes integrates "retro" style into his posters. This gives him a very fresh style. Contemporary illustration mixes old and new culture, high amounts of information depicted in the most simple way possible, and qualities of hand-drawn and digital artwork. 

Albert Einstein once said, "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction." I think this quote sums up Olly Moss's body of work. Everything is simply stated. Moss does not need complexity. His work is refreshing and relaxing to look at. 

5 comments:

  1. Oh man, these posters are so damn nice. I love the colors they used and how they blended the background and foreground together.

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  2. very smart how the environments of the planets, match the features of the characters

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  3. I've seen this guys work before! And I gotta say he comes up with some clever poster designs. I think these 3 posters are really nice!

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  4. There are a lot of star wars posters out there like this. I would like to see these on a box set for the original trilogy, perhaps if they actually ever put the version where Han Solo shot first to DVD (which they never will). I've also noticed a lot of minimalist pieces based on Star Wars like this example http://files.sharenator.com/minimalist_film_posters_star_wars_Minimalist_Film_Posters-s468x672-52369.jpg

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  5. Olly Moss is very good. Reminds me a lot of old Saul Bass stuff.

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