Take Something New and Make It Old
A design exercise that has been making the rounds lately, one I can't get enough of and have to share with anyone who'll listen, is the re-imagining of modern video games, movies, albums, and so on as worn out, classic book and album covers. It takes a product completely out of its element and reinterprets what makes it memorable in the first place. The result being that oftentimes these "remixes" are more elegant and precise solutions than their original designs. They're also just plain fun. The craze seems to have started earlier this year with Olly Moss's series of video games as book covers inspired by Penguin Classics covers and Saul Bass illustration. Just to show a couple:
From there the idea spread to other designers, mostly through Flickr, and took on a life of its own. Soon more Penguin Classics versions of modern media popped up. The best of them all take a familiar piece of pop culture and embody it in the simplest, most memorable illustration possible. The classic, simple imagery of 60s and 70s book covers like Penguin's gives designers free reign to get abstract in their interpretations. The results not only present the content in a completely fresh way, but many of them are very clever and funny. One of my favorite examples is Mitch Ansara's I Can Read Movies series, covers for fake novelizations of famous movies. The covers are simple and graphic with iconic imagery, and often perfectly encapsulate the movie. Here are a couple typical examples:
M.S. Corley's redesigns for the Harry Potter series are another perfect example of making a cover that's both abstracted but instantly recognizable for Potter fans:
It's also fun to see how this anachronistic approach has evolved in the past few months. Designs based on classic album sleeves, rather than book covers, are becoming the latest trend. Most recently Logan Walters took rap album covers and redesigned them in the style Blue Note Records jazz covers:
The potential combinations of something new as something old become seemingly endless. These remixes also breathe new life into seemingly dated styles that before I've always taken for granted. As a design exercise it's a fun challenge that forces you to think of your favorite movie or album in a different context, but can also challenge you to see how much story you can convey with as simple an illustration as possible. Even though it is designing in an old style, it is a great exercise for approaching a problem in a new way.
More Remixes:
Nice post Blair! I love the style of these posters too. I could probably look at them all day. Thanks for posting.
Very cool. I have a bookcase full of old paperbacks like these and I have always wanted to let them inspire me in my designs. Gonna start thinking about it again.
On a slightly related topic, I’ve sorta wondered what would happen if a publisher tried taking something bad and making it look very good. For example, if top designers took little known books that weren’t very good and decked them out with amazing covers, would they sell? My guess is maybe, until they are reviewed for what they are.
Very nice idea and designs, I love those old book covers, too.
I often took them as inspiration as well as books from the 1890 from archive.org, too.
The postmodern approach to make somthing “new” “old”, is an act of recreating mood flows and mix periods. Thats most likely as close as one can get to design time travels.
And there’s also these super cool “vintage Dharma” ads: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hotmeteor/sets/72157615214095434/detail/
Oops: vintage Dharma ads
I’ve loved this trend ever since I first saw it! I remember seeing this somewhere else, before, but I can’t remember when. Perhaps there was a Photoshop Phriday for it or something. (Photoshop Phridays create some of my absolute favorite inspirations sometimes)
@Steve I’d bet it would definitely improve sales, at least at first. I know I’ve bought many a book just because the cover was that awesome.
@Anna Yes! I adore those; the attention to detail and sense of humor is great. “This is one smoke you’ll never run from” especially is too perfect.
@Iaman Hmm, it might’ve been the Make video game covers classy thread at Something Awful. That was another page I stumbled upon during my research. But I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a Photoshop Phriday for it too.
@Blair You’re probably right, it was likely just that thread. But my comment about how awesome Photoshop Phridays can be still stands :)
I love this. I love looking at old book covers, there’s just something magical about them. I can’t imagine the task of the graphic designer back in days of yore when faced with a new publication; they had such little tools at their disposal and had to do manually what we do with computers today.
Lovely trend.
This is a beautiful looking site :)
Gorgeous! Saul Bass’ the man.
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