2012.07.27
Syd Mead At ComicCon 2012
SYD MEAD took a few moments out to talk to Game Live TV when he dropped by the SEGA event at this year’s COMIC CON in San Diego to sign posters, and chat with his fans.
Interview Part I
Interview Part II
Press
2012.06.26
SOME/THINGS MAGAZINE Features Syd Mead
Concept designer who began his career in industrial & automotive design before revolutionising the aesthetics of sci-fi with tron, & creating the visual concept for the landmark cyberpunk film blade runner.
SOME/THINGS MAGAZINE is a curated project in the form of a luxury book. Employing the finest recycled paper stock, the highest quality printing techniques, and environmentally responsible luxury production methods, each issue has a distinct conceptual theme and provides extensive insight into the inspiration of its featured contributors. Instead of conventional advertising, some/things creates commissioned editorial content which makes no distinction from the exclusive artist features. The publication is available in 25 countries worldwide at some of the most prestigious boutiques, concept stores, galleries, museums, and bookshops.
2012.06.13
2012
2012.05.31
ArtInfo: Future Perfect Exhibition
New York, NY
* Syd Mead, “Future (Perfect),” at BravinLee Programs, 526 West 26th Street, #211, May 11-June 30, 2012
Classic sci-fi artist Syd Mead presents, in these two-dozen gouache paintings spanning the ’60s to 2010, exhaustively detailed visions of a spectacular, utopian, and super-capitalist future, where the perfect, tan bodies of space-age narcissists are reflected in the likewise blemish-free chromed surfaces of their hyper-vans, mega-yachts, and pleasure-pods, while chemical-toned sunsets, exotic alien jungles, and scenes of intergalactic debauchery glide by silently (because in space, nobody can hear you swoon). — Benjamin Sutton
2012.05.24
Gotryke: Future Perfect Exhibition
New York, NY
Syd Mead is in the brains behind the sets of Blade Runner, Tron, and Mission Impossible III, but he’s also one of the most prolific designers of the modern era, who has designed for Ford, Sony and architectural firms. Mead is also an accomplished painter who exhibited at Document 6 in Kassel, Germany in 1973. A rare exhibitions of his paintings is on view at BravinLee in New York through June 20.
2012.05.17
Hyperallergic: The Man Who Dreamed Up the World of Blade Runner
BravinLee Programs in Chelsea has one of the most eye-popping shows currently on display in the city’s art galleries. The gallery has invited Syd Mead, the futurist designer behind such cult classics as Blade Runner (1982), Aliens (1986) and Tron (1982), to exhibit his creations at their West 26th Street space.
Syd Mead checking out some student work at the Vancouver Film School (via blog.vfs.com)
The futurist visions are painted with gouache on board and reveal a very hedonist vision of the world of the future. Figures are sensual, details are abundant and the angles shift to see the world from above, below and from impossible perspectives that give the universe he imagines an ethereal tint.
What’s peculiar about Mead’s work is how it feels strangely familiar even if it is situated in another time. Like Victorian visions of the future or images of the late 20th C. created during the Jazz age, there is a slice of life feel to these scene that make them as appealing today as when they left his desk or easel.
2012.05.16
New York Near Say: Future Perfect Exhibition
New York, NY
Mead is known for his design work on blockbusters films such as “Tron,” “Blade Runner,” and “Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” as well as on toys, consumer electronics and luxury jet interiors. Mead recently designed Bar Basque in the Eventi Hotel on the corner of 29th Street and Sixth Avenue in Chelsea.
The event, showcasing Mead’s sleek, erotic and glamorous visions of the future, will be held from May 11 to June 30 from 6-8 p.m.
“The future starts one second from now; you must prepare for the future and believe that it will happen in a nice way.” – Syd Mead, 2005
2012.05.15
POPSI: Future Perfect Exhibition
New York, NY
Getting around in the future is going to be something of a trip, at least to let classics of science fiction like TRON, Blade Runner, Aliens, and Star Trek tell the story. In a rare glimpse into the mind of the man that largely shaped Hollywood’s sci-fi representation of the future of transport, a collection of visionary designer Syd Mead’s paintings is currently on display in Manhattan.
Mead is probably best known for his work on vehicle design and environments for Hollywood films, particularly future-leaning titles like the ones mentioned above, all of which benefitted from Mead’s artistic touches (those Blade Runner “spinner” cars? That’s Syd Mead.). But he was also a prolific painter, using gouache–a thicker, heavier form of watercolor–to bring form to his many visions of what the future might hold.
A former designer for Ford Motor Company, Mead’s work has always listed heavily toward transit (his design shop is based in Detroit). So while his work often portrayed utopian futures playing out, say, on distant planets or aboard spaceships, personal transit and particularly future analogs for the automobile are a theme throughout his body of work, which at this point reaches back far enough that it can be viewed in the context of today’s cars (for instance, his Future Rolls Royce leaves something to be desired as a predictor of the future–painted in 1967, it shares little with the actual Rolls-Royce designs of 2012–and yet is undeniably amazing in its conjecture).
‘Mobilage’ by Syd Mead: (1985) via BravinLee Programs
2012.05.15
Core 77: Future Perfect Exhibition
New York, NY
Film lovers—sci-fi fans in particular—are surely familiar with the work of “Futurist Designer” Syd Mead (we’re not sure if he’s got issues with the term ‘concept designer,’ but we’ll grant him the exception), and even the masses ought to recognize his groundbreaking work for the likes of Blade Runner, Aliens and TRON, among other canonical examples of the genre. If Mead’s reputation as a visionary visual artist is all but surpassed by those blockbusters, the current exhibition of gouaches—spanning the four decades of his career and counting—at BravinLee gallery in Chelsea offers a fascinating look at his work in a fine art context.
“Future Rolls-Royce” (1967)
2012.05.15
Car Design News: Future Perfect Exhibition
New York, NY
A selection of the work of Syd Mead – the designer behind some of the most iconic vehicles in films such as Blade Runner and Aliens – has gone on display at the BravinLee Gallery in New York.
The exhibition of the works, which span the forty years of his career to date, is sure to excite fans of the visionary designer, who continues to inspire designers young and old. Daniel Simon, the concept designer behind such films as Marvel’s Captain America and TRON Legacy, for example has worked closely with Mead.