Syd Mead

Sydney Jay Mead (July 18, 1933 – December 30, 2019) was an American artist, illustrator, industrial designer, and neo-futurist concept artist whose renderings of future cities, vehicles and technologies shaped the visual language of modern futurism and late twentieth-century science fiction. Born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Mead graduated from the Art Center School in Los Angeles in 1959 and joined Ford Motor Company's Advanced Styling Studio, leaving after roughly two years for a commission from U.S. Steel to portray steel as a material of the future. The five volumes he illustrated for the company were circulated and collected widely across industrial and educational circles, resulting in a transformation in his practice from mere transportation design to broad-scale applied futurism across a variety of disciplines. In 1970, Mead founded Syd Mead, Inc., which remained the vehicle for the rest of his career. His work ranged across consumer products, technology, architecture, aeronautics, astronautics, sea craft, automotive, technology, immersive entertainment, and interactive/video games. Mead principally painted in gouache throughout his career, and maintained an independent art practice. Mead worked on his first feature film in 1979, at the age of 45, when he designed the antagonist of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Commissions followed on Blade Runner and Tron in 1982, followed by more than a dozen additional films including 2010, Aliens, Short Circuit, Elysium, and Blade Runner 2049. His designs have been cited as formative by filmmakers, industrial designers and architects, and his work has been exhibited at institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. He received the National Design Award in 2006, and the Art Directors Guild awarded him the William Cameron Menzies Award posthumously in 2020. Mead coined the job title "visual futurist" for his screen credit on Blade Runner, and used...