Syd Mead, ‘Visual Futurist’ for Numerous S-F, Fantasy Films, Dies at 86

Syd Mead, whose innovative designs for science-fiction and fantasy films produced many of pop culture’s most indelible characters and settings, passed away on December 30 at the age of 86.

Mead referred to himself as a “visual futurist”, a title he earned as the conceptual artist behind such films as Blade Runner and its sequel, Blade Runner 2049, Aliens, Tron, Star Trek: The Motion Picture and many others.

Born in 1933, Mead graduated from the Art Center School in Los Angeles in 1959. He designed cars at the Ford Motor Co.’s Advanced Styling Studio for two years, then became a successful freelance illustrator, forming Syd Mead Inc. and going on to work in Hollywood and Japan. In 2015, Mead was honored with the Visual Effects Society Award and was scheduled to receive the Art Directors Guild's William Cameron Menzies Award in a February 2020 ceremony.

The Hollywood Reporter recalled a 2011 interview Mead had with NPR in which he outlined his creative process: “Mead said that after he read a script for a futuristic movie he was set to work on, he turned to Google to do his flesh out his ideas. ‘You download different research tracts on that specific subject and find out that we're implanting cameras in people's eyes now,' he said. 'They're working on artificial nanoscale retinas. And so you start with that technology leap, or possibility, and then you design around that.

"'To me, science fiction is reality ahead of schedule.’"