Olly
Moss
First editions
Asking Olly Moss who his favourite Harry Potter character is seems to bring a kind of joyful agony to his face.
We’re not playing fair; that’s a tough choice. Perhaps it would be fairer to ask who he would love to draw the most. Immediately, the answer is: ‘Snape. And McGonagall – they have the most interesting silhouettes.’
The hugely talented graphic designer is a bit of a Potter fan, you see. So when Pottermore asked Olly to create new covers for the Harry Potter eBooks, he jumped at the chance.
‘Harry Potter has always been my favourite. I skipped [Philosopher’s Stone] because I was being a weird snob about it – I was ten. Then by the time Prisoner of Azkaban was out, I remember my mum saying I should read them.
‘We were going on holiday and she bought [Azkaban] for me, but she got me the adult covers of the first two novels because I was still being a snob.’
Even then, covers mattered.
Olly’s striking reimaginings of famous movie posters and his distinctive art style show his flair for creating iconic imagery with a twist. He says he was originally inspired by modernist graphic designers like Saul Bass, Paul Rand and, more recently, Jason Munn.
‘He’s a great gig poster designer. He’s the guy that really turned me on to the double image approach to things.
‘I like things to have more than one layer. The initial, “Oh, that’s an attractive image,” then it’s got a secondary reveal when you look closer. It’s something that I’ve always enjoyed doing.’
Each of these new covers tells more than one story. Look closely at Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows; there’s a detail that’s easy to miss at first sight.
‘Deathly Hallows is my favourite cover, because it’s the image that has summed up Harry Potter in my mind for such a long time. The scar – it feels like the culmination of the entire series and that’s the image that’s been stuck in my head.
‘This is a world where things often seem quite mundane on the surface and then have a secondary reveal. I love coming up with those images because it makes me feel that no one’s done this before – no one’s seen something in this specific way.’
Now Olly’s designs front the books he’s read since childhood. He tells me that the project has been a labour of love. ‘I really pitched my heart out. I came up with four or five different approaches and sketched most of the books for each.
‘The next day I got on a plane to Comic-Con, crashed on a friend’s hotel room floor and figured I’d forget about it. Two days later I woke up really hungover – so, so hungover, because we’d been in the hotel bar until four in the morning. I got the call that said I got the job and I lost my mind.’
As a massive fan of the book series, Olly says he was also conscious of avoiding visual spoilers.
‘For Half-Blood Prince I thought maybe I should have a Snape cover but then that could be a horrible spoiler. Really it’s the book; it’s Dumbledore and Harry fighting off the Inferi. That’s such a vibrant image from that book. Also it’s nice to get Dumbledore on a cover.’
Kathleen Kennedy, president of LucasFilm, revealed in an interview that Industrial Light & Magic London has some of Olly’s work painted on the wall. What does he think about the idea of J.K. Rowling having his designs above her mantelpiece some day? With both hands over his face and a barely audible ‘Whoa,’ the thought might be a little intimidating.
‘That was easily the most terrifying aspect of this entire brief. I could deal with the failure of not getting the pitch, the thing I was terrified of was making something she hated.
‘It must be tough because she has inspired so many people to make so many different things. She must be bombarded with different interpretations of her work all the time, so to make something that really stood out as something she enjoyed would be really cool to me.’
From the beautiful Gryffindor red and gold colours of Philosopher’s Stone to the howling wolf within Prisoner of Azkaban, the attention to detail and cleverness of Olly’s designs are a perfect match for J.K. Rowling’s words. They show just how much Olly adores these stories – something you pick up within minutes of talking to him.
‘I wouldn’t work on something that I didn’t really love or wasn’t important to me, because I wouldn’t do a good job.’
New editions
It’s twenty years since the first Harry Potter book was published in Sweden. To mark the occasion a new podcast is launching which will analyse the books and discuss their enduring appeal.
On 24 August 1999 Harry Potter och De Vises Sten was first published in Sweden. To celebrate the anniversary, publisher Rabén & Sjögren has reissued the entire Harry Potter series with stunning new covers by the artist Olly Moss. This has been shortly followed by the launch of a special anniversary podcast PotterPodden – Harry Potter Bok För Bok, a collaboration between audio platform Storytel and Rabén & Sjögren.
The podcast is hosted by journalist Marie Birde (founder of Darling magazine, the radio programme Stil on P1 and the children’s magazine, Koko), who has read the Harry Potter books an ‘inappropriate’ amount of times: ‘It’s essentially a book club where we read one book at a time and discuss them,’ says Birde.
The podcast will cover a range of topics for each book – from what is your favourite chapter to the best spell and the coolest Hogwarts house. And the perennial question: can’t Dumbledore ever say anything plainly?
There will be seven episodes – one for each book – and every episode features one to two guests. All the participants are Harry Potter fans and love the wizarding world. The books are read in order, from Harry Potter och De Vises Sten to Harry Potter och Dödsrelikerna.
The first episode features guest Björn Kjellman, who has recently narrated the entire series for digital audio in Swedish, and fellow Potter expert Gabriella Gomez from the Science Fiction bookshop chain.
Later in the season, the podcast will be joined by the bestselling author Jonas Gardell, artist Janice, TV hosts Josefin Johansson and Johanna Koljonen, as well as popular psychologist Henrik Fexeus. We are told they are some of the biggest fans of Harry Potter in Scandinavia!
‘Hearing about how much people have invested in Harry Potter has been so exciting. People have built their identities around the series and thoroughly analysed every single book – and that has also made me look at the books in a new, perhaps more enlightened, way. I’m already looking forward to re-reading the entire series for the umpteenth time. And to never stop discussing these titles,’ says Marie Birde.
Hogwarts Library
Graphic artist Olly Moss designed the eBook cover of this new edition for Pottermore, while print publishers Bloomsbury (UK) and Scholastic (US) have their own fresh artwork.
Olly Moss brings iconic design, vibrant colour and classic imagery for these latest Harry Potter cover designs, commissioned by Pottermore and exclusive to the German audiobooks.
Olly Moss’s love for Harry Potter shines through as we discuss designing covers for the re-release of the German Harry Potter audiobooks. He admits, though, that the work was a labour of love. ‘I didn’t need to re-read the books,’ he says, ‘they’re just there in my head.’
These new designs were commissioned by Pottermore and are classic Olly Moss: iconic, beautifully executed and full of details every true fan will recognise. This time the covers are a series of reimagined holiday posters from the golden age of British railways with Hogwarts at centre stage.
The posters have a nostalgic feel to them; the colour palette is that of 1950s seaside towns, steam trains and long summer holidays. ‘I was just a big fan of 1950s design,’ Moss explains, ‘and it just seemed like a natural fit. I really liked the idea of Harry getting on a train and going somewhere exciting every year. There is something very British about that. That period of design – and obviously Harry Potter – is steeped in that imagery and I wanted to bring those two things together.’
As with Olly’s Harry Potter eBook covers revealed last year, each poster is brilliantly complex. A simple design hides layers of detail that offer more than first meets the eye. ‘I tried to fill them with as many little details as I could within the constraints of keeping the composition and the viewpoint the same every time,’ says Moss.
He points out the Dark Mark that hovers in the clouds above Hogwarts in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. ‘I sent it in and the feedback was, “Do you think we could see a Dark Mark on that poster?” and I said, “Look, it’s already there!”’
Fans of Olly’s work not only get to enjoy his creations on the covers of the German audiobooks but also have the opportunity to purchase the original designs for themselves. Which is his favourite? Could he pick one out? Olly laughs. ‘No! This is such a cop-out answer, but my favourite would be looking at them altogether. I mean, that’s how it was designed: it was designed as a series.’
When we press him he reluctantly admits that if he had to choose it would be Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. ‘I think it’s the one with the palette which most mimics the style of the old posters. It seems the most authentic to me, which is what I was going for.’
Olly is typically self-deprecating but he is very ready to admit how excited he is about other fans hanging his work up on their walls. ‘I really like that people who have a similar love of Harry Potter will also hopefully appreciate my personal take on it and that makes me very happy. I’m very proud of that.’
Olly’s artwork is exclusive to the German Harry Potter audiobooks, narrated by Rufus Beck.
The new edition of the classic Hogwarts Library book has been brought up to date by J.K. Rowling with an additional six beasts, as well as a new foreword and illustrations.
The latest edition of classic Hogwarts Library book Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them has been revised by J.K. Rowling to include new beasts.
Six new magical creatures will feature in this up to date edition, out on 14 March, as well as a brand new foreword from Magizoologist Newt Scamander and some beautiful line illustrations by artist Tomislav Tomic.
Known to Potter fans as one of the textbooks from Harry’s days at Hogwarts, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them was first published in 2001. The fictional book was ‘written’ by Newt Scamander – the hero of J.K. Rowling’s debut screenplay and feature-length film.
As well as proving to be an indispensable creature compendium to Harry, the book has enchanted readers’ imaginations ever since. And like any diligent author, J.K. Rowling has revisited the original text to bring it in line with recent developments in the Wizarding World. We won’t ruin the surprise of which beasts these will be, but let’s just say there may be a few familiar faces. Or snouts. Or beaks.
Graphic artist Olly Moss designed the eBook cover of this new edition for Pottermore, while print publishers Bloomsbury (UK) and Scholastic (US) have their own fresh artwork.
Asking Olly Moss who his favourite Harry Potter character is seems to bring a kind of joyful agony to his face.
We’re not playing fair; that’s a tough choice. Perhaps it would be fairer to ask who he would love to draw the most. Immediately, the answer is: ‘Snape. And McGonagall – they have the most interesting silhouettes.’
The hugely talented graphic designer is a bit of a Potter fan, you see. So when Pottermore asked Olly to create new covers for the Harry Potter eBooks, he jumped at the chance.
‘Harry Potter has always been my favourite. I skipped [Philosopher’s Stone] because I was being a weird snob about it – I was ten. Then by the time Prisoner of Azkaban was out, I remember my mum saying I should read them.
‘We were going on holiday and she bought [Azkaban] for me, but she got me the adult covers of the first two novels because I was still being a snob.’
Even then, covers mattered.
Olly’s striking reimaginings of famous movie posters and his distinctive art style show his flair for creating iconic imagery with a twist. He says he was originally inspired by modernist graphic designers like Saul Bass, Paul Rand and, more recently, Jason Munn.
‘He’s a great gig poster designer. He’s the guy that really turned me on to the double image approach to things.
‘I like things to have more than one layer. The initial, “Oh, that’s an attractive image,” then it’s got a secondary reveal when you look closer. It’s something that I’ve always enjoyed doing.’
Each of these new covers tells more than one story. Look closely at Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows; there’s a detail that’s easy to miss at first sight.
‘Deathly Hallows is my favourite cover, because it’s the image that has summed up Harry Potter in my mind for such a long time. The scar – it feels like the culmination of the entire series and that’s the image that’s been stuck in my head.
‘This is a world where things often seem quite mundane on the surface and then have a secondary reveal. I love coming up with those images because it makes me feel that no one’s done this before – no one’s seen something in this specific way.’
Now Olly’s designs front the books he’s read since childhood. He tells me that the project has been a labour of love. ‘I really pitched my heart out. I came up with four or five different approaches and sketched most of the books for each.
‘The next day I got on a plane to Comic-Con, crashed on a friend’s hotel room floor and figured I’d forget about it. Two days later I woke up really hungover – so, so hungover, because we’d been in the hotel bar until four in the morning. I got the call that said I got the job and I lost my mind.’
As a massive fan of the book series, Olly says he was also conscious of avoiding visual spoilers.
‘For Half-Blood Prince I thought maybe I should have a Snape cover but then that could be a horrible spoiler. Really it’s the book; it’s Dumbledore and Harry fighting off the Inferi. That’s such a vibrant image from that book. Also it’s nice to get Dumbledore on a cover.’
Kathleen Kennedy, president of LucasFilm, revealed in an interview that Industrial Light & Magic London has some of Olly’s work painted on the wall. What does he think about the idea of J.K. Rowling having his designs above her mantelpiece some day? With both hands over his face and a barely audible ‘Whoa,’ the thought might be a little intimidating.
‘That was easily the most terrifying aspect of this entire brief. I could deal with the failure of not getting the pitch, the thing I was terrified of was making something she hated.
‘It must be tough because she has inspired so many people to make so many different things. She must be bombarded with different interpretations of her work all the time, so to make something that really stood out as something she enjoyed would be really cool to me.’
From the beautiful Gryffindor red and gold colours of Philosopher’s Stone to the howling wolf within Prisoner of Azkaban, the attention to detail and cleverness of Olly’s designs are a perfect match for J.K. Rowling’s words. They show just how much Olly adores these stories – something you pick up within minutes of talking to him.
‘I wouldn’t work on something that I didn’t really love or wasn’t important to me, because I wouldn’t do a good job.’
The portfolio of Winchester, UK–based Olly Moss is barely a decade old and already spans multiple creative disciplines: T-shirt design, limited-edition posters, comic books, video games, websites, branding and more. Between the larger, more prominent entities you’ll find a sprinkling of odd commercial jobs. For every Batman or Star Wars project in his portfolio, design work for a small indie film or a logo peeks in.
When discussing his body of work, Moss is quick to brush off its depth. “I think you can look at any piece of work that I’ve done and reverse engineer it, in terms of its intent. There’s no real deeper meaning, it’s just a thing that I thought was good so I did it. There’s not really much more to say than that with most of it.”
Moss is in a unique position for a freelance designer. The work finds him—and with good reason. As illustrator and Mondo Gallery art director Rob Jones puts it, “Solutions flit around like butterflies in his head at all times, and he just effortlessly nets one when needed.”
His relationship with clients begins with his sketches. In an interview with film and game concept designer Ash Thorp on Thorp’s “The Collective Podcast,” Moss said, “I love pitching [concept art] for free. It frees you from any assumed expectations that you have. You have the brief, but when you really want the job, you’re so focused on giving [the client] what you think they want rather than what they actually want from you, which is you. So I think, what do I want from this job? What do I want to give them? They’ve come to me because they’ve seen my portfolio and all the things I put there because I thought they were good; all the client work that I hate is not there. They’ve come to me for those reasons, and I want to give them more of that. I want to pitch you the weird thing. I will send you a sketch that will take me eight hours to think of and five minutes to do.”
For his work with publisher Pottermore Limited on the cover illustrations for the 2015 worldwide digital release of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter book series, Moss was asked for a single sketch, yet turned in five separate approaches with sketches for each of the seven books. “I pitched harder for that than anything I’ve ever pitched in my life. I wanted it so badly. They were my books growing up. I loved Harry Potter and I still love Harry Potter so much. I wanted that job.”
The approach that was chosen was Moss’s second favorite, leaving his preferred illustrations to disappear on a hard drive of unused work. “They felt the closest to what I wanted to do with Harry Potter as a fan,” Moss explains. But because the illustrations were intended for a digital release that would most likely be seen on black-and-white e-reader screens, Pottermore decided that his choice of seven illustrations with only minor element changes to a landscape of Hogwarts wouldn’t be as useful as designs that remained impactful at any size and in both grayscale and full-color. “They were like, ‘What can we do with these [other cover concepts]?’ And I was like, ‘Well, I have a little side line in posters.’”
That “side line” in poster design has been a mainstay in Moss’ career. In 2007, while he was still a student at the University of Hertfordshire, Moss began submitting designs to the site Threadless.com, an internet-based T-shirt company that allows the audience to rate submitted designs, and those with the highest ratings are turned into a tee and sold on the site, with a portion of profit going to the creator of the winning design.
For Moss, the immediate feedback and critique on his work, or lack thereof, would determine the next design. “If the vast majority of people are saying it’s good, you can figure out why this particular piece is working or why another doesn’t get an immediate response. You know it’s bad when you put something up and nobody comments or cares about it. That’s the real alarm bell.”
These early designs were bright, with Moss’s ever-present intelligent absurdity. “Spoilt,” one of his more popular Threadless shirts, is a text-based design spoiling Hollywood’s most regarded film twists: “Darth Vader is Luke’s father,” “Bruce Willis is a ghost in The Sixth Sense,” etc.
Moss readily admits these illustrations for Threadless were not well-executed, but as he explained in his talk at the 2012 Offset conference: “It just sort of hit me really quickly that a weak execution can be overcome by a strong concept. Any concept at all can elevate a terrible execution.”
Through his self-assigned series of red and black film posters, Moss put his concepts to the test. The series found Moss removing elements, simplifying. As he defined each concept, the audience for his work grew. Early coverage of the posters online recognized the simplicity of his execution and the brawn of his concepts, filled increasingly with sharp illusions that require a double-take to fully comprehend.
At Offset, Moss explained the impetus for the self-assigned series: “I was always using movie references in my work, but I never thought of doing something actually based on a movie. I thought about my desire to keep simplifying my work, and putting the meaning and the concept as the focus, and just really wanting to have a go at something like this. These film posters are the first things I remember people blogging about or me getting inquiries about. They wanted to see work like this.”
Those early internet rumblings were followed by a call from Los Angeles—an offer for a position at visual effects house Prologue, creators of title sequences and graphics for films including Iron Man, Superman Returns and Star Trek Beyond. Moss, then an expat in Los Angeles, lasted a short time at Prologue, but that time was impactful.
It was there that he worked on concept design for the titles of the 2010 film The Losers, which introduced him to the work of New York Times bestselling comic book artist Jock, as well as other creatives, like Thorp, with whom he would work later. It was also there that he realized the pace of Hollywood was not for him. “It’s like boot camp,” Moss says. “You go and you learn so much so quickly because there are so many talented people around you doing great stuff. It was a really valuable experience, as much in terms of teaching me that’s not what I want to do.”
So Moss returned to his home in Winchester and focused on the work he wanted to pursue. In 2009, Moss was invited to participate in Los Angeles–based Gallery 1988’s event inspired by the hit ABC television show Lost. This would be his first licensed poster. For his part, Moss created an illustration around the character Locke, pulling inspiration from the aesthetic of the great Saul Bass. “I didn’t want to ape any one of his posters in particular. I came at it from the point of view of: What would he have done? How would he have solved this problem?”