Olly Moss & Saul Bass Movie Posters

Olly Moss

Olly Moss is a more recent designer than the other designers whose film posters I've looked at, and I think the lack of more recent film poster designers is probably down to the on-screen nature in which films are advertised today. I became aware of Olly Moss's work when I saw the above alternate posters for the original Star Wars trilogy. I think they're exceptional pieces of design due to their minimalistic use of typography, strong use of shape, and appropriate use of colour. These 3 posters are, to my mind at least, the opitomy of what an alternate film poster should be, modern and completely different from the original posters, but yet still relatable to the original audience of the film.

One thing I do notice about Olly Moss's film posters however, is that they're inconsistent in their success. Part of the reason the Star Wars ones are so successful is because they are done in the same way as a set. Most of the other poster designers I looked at also have a distinct style of designing their posters, and the style is appropriate to the films and the era of the films. What I find with Olly Moss's work however is that, while his style is consistent, it doesn't work in some of the posters because of the films he chose to do. Two examples are shown above. I've never seen the film Dirty Harry, but it doesn't sound like the sort of film that would use a clean cut screen printed poster for its promotion. Alice in Wonderland is known for being quite a psychedelic film with lots going on, and so again, I don't think Olly Moss's clean style of work is appropriate for a film poster. 

He does however have other posters that work well. I think the Harry Potter poster catches the somewhat dark and mysterious nature of the plot and the general feel of the series of films. My favourite individual poster of his however is the Dark Knight Rises poster. I think the shiny effect the text has adds a sense of mystery and power that wouldn't have been there had the text not been shiny. The slightly gradiented and grainy background on an off-white paper makes the poster look a bit more raw that most of his work, which I think is something that was necessary to make the cape stand out just the right amount from the background. 

Saul Bass

What I find particularly interesting about Saul Bass's work is how similar it is to Olly Moss's. Generally they both use a bright coloured background with either black or white text and images. I find that Saul Bass's work is a lot more unique to the film that Olly Moss's though, and I put this down to the variety of typography, which is something that Olly Moss does to some extent, but not really to any noticeable extent because he only uses small text, whereas Saul Bass uses a lot larger text, and I think this gives his posters a lot more character than Olly Moss's.