Spoof "I Can Read Movies" Book Covers

Remember The Mike Flowers Pops? That retro sounding band whose 50s bossa nova version of Wonderwall – dust scratches and all – sounded so convincing that many people thought the Oasis song was a cover, not the other way around? La petite histoire goes that Noel Gallagher received numerous phone calls from the press who didn't believe he had originally written the song.

Now meet Mitch Ansara who blogs on Spacesick (although he pretty much only updates his Flickr right now). Mitch created a number of mock 1960s paperback book covers for "I Can read Movies", a fictional series of movie novelisations.

Well, the books came about from my involvement in the Make Something Cool Every Day group on flickr. They were partly inspired by my friend Moss' totally awesome movie poster remakes, and all the musty old textbooks and digests that I used to love flipping through as a kid. I love movies more than anyone you'll ever meet… and I have no experience, training, or confidence in graphic design or type, so I'm just having fun, really!

This gallery definitely proves that you don't necessarily need "experience, training, or confidence in graphic design or type" to produce gorgeous work. What Mitch does have is an keen eye for that typical 1960s style, and for distilling and translating the concept of a movie to a simple striking illustration. The covers are clever and funny, and sometimes even flat-out hilarious – check for example the Highlander cover. But most of all, they look like the real deal, thanks to the delightful retro style of the illustrations, the appropriate colour scheme, the very good ageing effect, down to the little camera icon. The choice of type is spot-on: a wide Century and Eurostile Extended with a dash of Helvetica.

Keep an eye on that man.

Visit the "I Can Read Movies" gallery on the Spacesick blog here.