Olly Jonathan Moss (based in Winchester,UK) is an English freelance designer, graphic artist and illustrator, known for his reimagined pop culture themed posters and prints referencing characters from games, movies and TV shows. A lot of his designs have gained widespread recognition around the internet because of their subject matter and execution. His style is well known for playing with figure-ground perception and images within images.
I really love this artists work because of how many ‘layers’ his designs have. At first glance, it looks like his work is only one image, but after taking a closer look, there are more small details which really make the whole picture and further specify what the poster is promoting.
My favourite examples of this are how in one of the Firewatch posters, at first sight, it looks like there is just a lit match but upon closer inspection, the orange flames and sparks coming from it have been made/shaped to look like trees with birds flying away from them- signifying that the forest is on fire because of ‘just one stray match’. The shape of a tree has also been constructed using the sunlit faces of the mountains in another one of the Firewach posters.
More pieces if Olly Moss’s work that I admire are the Return of the Jedi and Jungle Book posters. In these, the trees (right down to the smaller branches) have been artistically used to add details inside the silhouettes; Making out the face on the Darth Vader mask, along with Mowgli, the snake and the tiger’s stripes.
I find it really clever how Moss has seamlessly utilised distinct aspects of what is being promoted in his many graphic posters to tell a story. Because of this, I am going to attempt to do the same thing and create my own image of what I envisage a poster for my chosen novel ‘Coraline’ could look like.
Olly Moss (2014). Olly Moss. [online] Olly Moss. Available at: http://ollymoss.com.