“Visual Futurist: The Art & Life Of Syd Mead”
“At some point of time (…) designing a car, designing a hat, somewhere… has to start with an image, because people who does not know how to draw have to agree that’s what they are going to make (…) I always think of designing as part of a scenario”. Syd Mead.
Syd Mead is an industrial designer who has spent most of his career focusing on forward looking projects, conducting concept research on products and environments in futuristic environments.
I first learned about him when I was in design school in Barcelona, that was back in the early nineties. I recall being impressed by his representations of the future, most involving portrays of what I would call a “cinematic experience”. What I mean by this is that the environment depicted in his drawings was as important as the product being featured. This helps the viewer’s imagination project the context of the design, which is key to any representation of a forward looking concept.
“You have to mix the known with the unknown and provide the viewer with something the public are comfortable with while adding new elements or updating things”.
His work has been leveraged by product manufacturers (e.g. Philips, US Steel, Boeing, Honda) and film makers alike (e.g. Blade Runner, Tron, Star Treck).
“One need only look at the down-to-earth sketches coming out of offices like Henry Dreyfuss or Brooks Stevens to realize that what Syd did was to elevate the ART (that is to say the magic) of visualization to another level- fantasy (…) Syd seemed to enjoy the idea of creating fantasy objects that created certain experiences far more than specific products“. Kevin Henry.
The following is part of an interview given by Syd to the Planetary Society:
1.- “I start any project by gathering as much information as possible on a fast track uptake.
2.- “I then pretend to forget all of it. My brain, of course does remember, but you must go outside the problem box to create new stuff that is familiar enough to relate to the real world”.
3.- “When I have done a first round of crazy idea drawings, I sort them into best case related to the problem. Then, these are matched carefully to the actual problem guidelines and the actual documentation and execution proceed”.
“In my entire professional career, I have been really wrong about three times and sort of wrong about four times. The single biggest problem in design is finding out from the client what it is that they really want“. Syd Mead.
José de Francisco Lopez 
Chicago, 16 June 07
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This blog’s Long Tail:
- Sci-Fi based scenarios: the city of the future
- Minority Report’s GUI
- Sci-Fi based scenarios
- Design concepts: future cars
- QoE: immersive scenarios and experiential marketing
- CNN’s Future Summit
- Corporations present at SecondLife
- IBM: 5 innovations for the next 5 years
References:
Picture credits:
[...] Source:consultaglobal “At some point of time (…) designing a car, designing a hat, somewhere… has to start with an image, because people who does not know how to draw have to agree that’s what they are going to make (…) I always think of designing as part of a scenario”. Syd Mead. [...]
This DVD looks interesting.Syd’s design genesis is really quite unique.His work appears Architectural, simple yet complex.Visually engineered to a high level,very functional and just believeable ,although I see his worlds being realised in the 22nd century due to the scale and cost of some of his elaborate constructions.
Syd mead heaviy utilizes futuristic aesthetics.
He is number one in this field, number one in the world.