Olly Moss

Olly Moss is possibly my favorite graphic designer working today. My admiration for his witty, often tongue-in-cheek work is one of the reasons I became interested in graphic design. I don't remember exactly when I first came across his illustrations and designs but they were so accessible and really "clicked" with my own personal sensibility. Since that time I've found myself Googling his name from time to time to see what he is producing at the moment.

A great deal of what Moss does are witty riffs on popular culture, as can be seen in the series of posters called "Films in Black and Red" in which he reimagines movie posters from classic or much-viewed films using only black, red, and white, or his "mash-ups" of favorite video games with classic Penguin paperback book covers in the series "Video Game Classics". He employs an uncomplicated style which relies heavily on grouping to let his natural wit shine through.

I know his popularity has been rising in the last few years and it is likely that all of us in the class are familiar with at least some of his work, whether we knew it at the time we encountered it or not. Perhaps the most surprising place I saw it was in a street market in Manila this past holiday break, where, among the locally-made goods and foodstuffs, was a Filipino man conversing with passers-by wearing a T-shirt with Moss's "Now Panic and Freak Out" parody design loudly and stylishly proclaimed in Gill Sans.

See a nice representative collection of Olly Moss's work on his personal website.

And his recent take on posters for the original Star Wars trilogy here.