Olly Moss

By Mark Kaufman

I was in Las Vegas over the weekend, and I visited the new Atomic Testing Museum. Cool museum about the atomic tests in Nevada from the 1940s to the early 90s. But that’s not what I want to talk about today. I was reminded of the reimagined video game covers I saw recently and have been meaning to post about, in particular the Missile Command redesign spurred my memory while at the museum. However in researching this awesome idea of recreating video game classics in the manner of Penguin paperbacks or Criterion cd packaging, I found the website of Olly Moss, whose idea it was originally. So you can follow the links to the video game covers, many people have posted about these before. I want to talk briefly about Olly Moss. I have seen his illustration work before in the New York Times, and liked it, but never followed up and checked out his portfolio site. This whole episode brought me there and I must say I am glad it did. Some really terrific work in both the design and illustration arenas, simple, elegant, sharp and downright funny. What I really love about his work is his taking the chance to experiment with pre-conceived notions about what a game package, or movie poster should be and flat out running with it. Taking a leap and creating your own projects is something we all should do, and it seems that Olly’s ideas are bearing fruit and according to his Flickr page it looks like something good is coming from his video game idea. And that is today’s long winded inspiration.