Visualize This

Okay, so I was trying to come up with some really unique and obscure designer to talk about, but honestly, that wouldn’t be the most honest answer to the question of who’s visualization style I admire most.

Yeah, it’s Syd Mead. Cliché, but I have my reasons.

When I was co-oping in Atlanta this summer, I met this guy who was really excited about industrial design (though he wasn’t a designer himself.) He had two first-edition Syd Mead books from back-in-the-day, and he lent one of them to me.

It was really cool to look through all of the concepts (and I love the smell of old books), and I found it fascinating to examine the past’s vision of the future. Even his present work has a visionary feel.

What really amazes me is the level of detail involved in Syd’s renderings—every highlight, line, and shadow seems to have been considered and included. On top of that, he really understands how to prioritize. In his images, the background information has a gestural quality, and the more important information has increasingly more detail. He masterfully leads the eye across the image, and has a clear understanding of dynamic composition.

If you check out Syd Mead’s website now, you can see a whole plethora of his work, information, and images. It’s really cool to consider how significant his influence on the industry has been, and how he’s still having an influence today.