Syd Mead
| Syd Mead | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
July 18, 1933 Saint Paul, Minnesota, U.S. |
| Other names | Sydney Jay Mead |
| Occupation | Industrial designer |
Sydney Jay Mead, commonly Syd Mead (born July 18, 1933), is a "visual futurist" and a neofuturistic concept artist. He is best known for his designs for science-fiction films such as Blade Runner, Aliens and Tron. Of his work, Mead was once moved to comment: "I've called science fiction 'reality ahead of schedule.'"
Mead was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, July 18, 1933, but spent only a few years there before moving to what would be the second of many homes throughout the western United States prior to graduating from high school in Colorado Springs, Colorado in 1951. After serving a three-year enlistment in the U.S. Army, Syd Mead continued on to the Art Center School in Los Angeles, (now the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena) where he graduated in June 1959. He was recruited by the Ford Motor Company’s Advanced Styling Studio under the management of Elwood Engel. Mead left the studio after two years to accept a variety of assignments to illustrate books and catalogues for large corporate entities such as United States Steel, Celanese, Allis-Chalmers and Atlas Cement. In 1970, he launched Syd Mead, Inc. in Detroit, Michigan to accommodate the offers he received, most notably from Philips Electronics.
As the principal of his newly formed corporation in the 1970s, Syd Mead spent about a third of his time in Europe, primarily to provide designs and illustrations for Philips of Holland. His work for international clients continues to this day. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Syd Mead, Inc. provided architectural renderings both interior and exterior for such clients as Intercontinental Hotels, 3D International, Harwood Taylor & Associates, Don Ghia, and Gresham & Smith. His architectural clients recently have expanded to include the New York firm of Philip Koether Architects, for which he designed the interior of a Manhattan eatery. Design activity accelerated after the corporate and personal move to California in 1975. In 1979, projects began to include work with most major studios, on such feature films as Star Trek: The Motion Picture, followed by Blade Runner, Tron, 2010, Short Circuit, Aliens, Timecop, Johnny Mnemonic and Mission: Impossible III. Beginning in 1983, Mead began to develop working relationships with Japanese corporate clients, including Sony, Minolta, Dentsu, Dyflex, Tiger Corporation, Seibu, Mitsukoshi, Bandai, NHK and Honda as well as contributing to Japanese film project Solar Crisis. In the 1990s, Syd supplied designs for two Japanese anime icons, Yamato 2520 and Turn A Gundam.
...
Wikipedia