Syd Mead
Syd Mead ( born July 18, 1933 as Sydney Jay Mead in Saint Paul, Minnesota) is an American industrial designer and film industry.
His first job he gets in 1952 at the Alexander Film Corporation, where he is involved in the production of animated films. In 1953 he enters the Army, serving for three years as a training sergeant in Okinawa. In 1956, he competes in Los Angeles at the Art Center and concludes his thereat design studies in 1959 with great success from. In the same year, he gets a job at the Ford Motor Company 's Advanced Styling Center in Dearborn, Michigan. In 1961 he moves to the Hansen Corporation to Detroit, Michigan, and its customers include U.S. Steel and Celcon Books Books.
After three more years at the company Intergraph in Detroit Mead founded his own company in 1970 Syd Mead Inc. in Detroit. He receives a 12 -year agreement on cooperation with Philips. His clients also include Sony, Chrysler, and Mechanix Illustrated. In 1975 he moved with his company after Capistrano Beach in California. In 1976 he published with the fantasy artists Martyn and Roger Dean the book Sentinel.
His first contact with Hollywood, he has 1978, when he (RA & A) on the design of the film Star Trek along with John Dykstra, Douglas Trumbull and Robert Abel: The Movie cooperates. He designs segments of the mysterious cloud structure, which is served by the Enterprise, as well as the spacecraft V'ger. In 1980 he has two major projects in the works, which should not last write for his pioneering design work of film history. For Ridley Scott's film Blade Runner, he designed large parts of Los Angeles, the airworthy police cars Spinner, Harrison Ford's apartment and the Voight - Kampff machine with which the hunted in the film replicants can be recognized as such.
Perhaps his best work is Steven Lisbergers milestone Tron, the first film in which a large part of the plot of computer- generated imagery is. Here Mead designed the light motorcycles Light Cycles, Sark Transportation, the tanks, the Recognizer and along with Moebius the complete background of the electronic world. Also the Tron logo from the movie poster is his work.
After Mead has worked a lot for the advertising industry (including for Pepsi ) until in 1984 he is active for Hollywood again. For the adaptation of the novel 2010: The Year We Make Contact by Peter Hyams, he designed the spaceship Leonov, including the interior design and the probes. A year later, he designed the robot No. 5 is alive for John Badham's number 5.
The following employees at several unfinished projects to 1986, his last major project so far follows. The Space Transportation Sulaco from James Cameron's Alien sequel Aliens - The Return can not deny his relationship to Sark from Tron transporter. Not playful superfluous appearance but simple functionality determines the design of Syd Mead. When you drop ship UD -4L Cheyenne, however, both his as well as the designs of his colleague Ron Cobb at Cameron fell through, so that the director took over here the design itself. 1989 paves after Blade Runner at the second collaboration with Ridley Scott. The project Isobar, in which Sylvester Stallone should take the lead role, and also such well-known people such as HR Giger and later - as a substitute for Ridley Scott - were involved Roland Emmerich, fails to script problems and the sale of the Columbia Studios Sony. His next film Starfire (1990 ) is due to directed problems to flop.
The following works for television and smaller design include contributions for Timecop (1994 ) by Peter Hyams, Strange Days ( 1995) by Kathryn Bigelow and Mission to Mars (2000) by Brian De Palma. In addition, he created the look for the computer game Maelstrom and the design for Wing Commander Prophecy. Currently Syd Mead is again strengthened for the industry operates and has published several books and a 4- part DVD collection called "The Techniques of Syd Mead " about his work.