Retro-futuristic Syd Mead illos from US Steel int'l promotional pack
A student was given a portfolio of high-quality Syd Mead promotional futuristic images intended as giveaways for United States Steel International customers, and he and his teacher scanned them and popped them on Flickr. This is wonderful stuff. Link (Thanks, Dennis!)
the latest
latest episodes
So fascinating how he suggested the future by giving cars the aerodynamic lines more often associated with airplanes. Though my first thought on looking at these pictures was "How Sixties." (I was right -- Wikipedia says this series came out in 1961.)
But he did predict some of the future: Number 15 looks very much like the traffic jams I've been in on I-95 and I-35. Though, come to think of it, I can remember being stuck in that kind of traffic in the Sixties, too. Maybe futuristic design, like a lot of science fiction, is more about the present than the future.
If you find these images appealing, please note that the future is not only shiny, it is also white, buff and the women all look like strippers. There is no suffering or conflict because we will live in some typically solipsistic frat boy's wet dream. Count me out
"There is no suffering or conflict because we will live in some typically solipsistic frat boy's wet dream. Count me out."
No suffering? No conflict? Future looks bright to me, brah.
I love Syd Mead. In the mid 70's, I used to pore over copies of Automobile Quarterly looking for his illustrations. Between him Peter Elson, Robert McCall and other visionaries, I didn't need the "real" future.
Interesting to note the menagerie of apparently bio-engineered beastly "pets" throughout Syd's work.
Concha2000 , you do recall that he also designed most of the sets and props for blade runner.
You will be glad to know that they are full of the suffering you desire.
@concha200
Note that Syd Mead also provided the conceptual designs for much of Blade Runner, a very dystopian portrayal of the future.
These scenes are so cheery and shiny because they are intended to sell steel.
There's nothing wrong with aspiring to a bright future.
There's nothing wrong with aspiring to a bright future. In fact, that's what we all should hope for.
Point taken. After all, it is advertising that was meant to appeal to the steel buyer of the 60's. My post was actually a reaction to a Flickr poster that wanted to dive in to the illustrations and live there which puzzles me. I find this kind of super-sanitized depiction of the future to be viscerally dystopian in the way that EPCOT is simultaneously exciting and terribly sad. I always wonder what one does all day in such a world.
Syd is a pretty cool gent. Once at his studio, I pointed out that his spaceship was the tip of a fountain pen and got a chuckle out of him.
For as well-known as Syd Mead is, I'm surprised his work is so hard to get ahold of. Portfolios like these go for hundreds of dollars on eBay, and he seems to only do extremely limited edition reprints (with signatures and numbers, natch) that sell out instantly.
Which is why it's nice to find high-res scans of his work on Flickr....
#9 -- I'd like to dive into some of these illustrations and live there, too, but not because I think an all-Caucasian sanitized future is ideal. It's more that I admire the sense of futuristic design that Syd Mead brings to ordinary things like stairs, handrails, furniture, and houses. Looking at the dishwater-dull apartment blocks around me... yeah, I'd prefer to live in a house like the one above!
As gorgeous as these are, I'd love to see the contemporary marketing reports indicating how many impulse sales of steel they generated among shopping housewives, how many extra tons of steel existing customers bought because of them over and above what they needed, and how many businesses decided after seeing these to use steel for something they were originally going to make out of, say, copper, or adobe.
It's kind of like how I really want to buy an airplane from Boeing after those TV spots they've been running on CNN lately. Sadly, none of the stores in my local mall seem to stock them.
(Yes, marketing generally mystifies me.)
These are beautiful, I love Sid Mead's work. What would we do in these worlds? Obviously we will be out camping next to our flying car with our hot boyfriend. Yummmms.
That's marketing Nores, that's really all it is.
I have admired Syd Mead's work since I was a kid. It is one of the things that made me want to study design. His ability to depict a compelling world around each object he designs is amazing. For the most part, "futuristic" designs tell us more about the hopes and fears of the time period they were created in, than what will actually come to pass. Anyone, no matter how visionary is bound to get most of it wrong because they are working within the assumptions of their time. Some have commented that these scenes appear dated, but seriously, some of this work is forty years old!!! The fact that anything still looks even remotely "futuristic" to our eyes is a phenomenal achievement.
I recognized the featured image immediately as the album art to the forthcoming gatefold LP "UnonoU" by the Portland, OR band Danava:
http://www.kemado.com/artists.php?req=show&artist=11
#9 "I always wonder what one does all day in such a world."
Well, I notice there are no leaves on the ground, or dirt on the sidewalk, so you'll need to spend a lot of time picking up and scrubbing. When that's done, well, you smile and stare off into the Future, when things will be even better.
Wow.
Thanks for exposing this exceptional flickr set Cory.
A future imagined as non-representative of a Great Collapse warms my heart.
The photo here instantly reminded me of this photo (from this set) of a house designed and built by Bob Alexander in 1960.