American industrial designer and concept artist (1933–2019), famed for Blade Runner and Tron, who designed the vast machine entity V'Ger for Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
Syd Mead was an American industrial designer, born in 1933, who called himself a visual futurist. He designed for car makers and electronics firms before turning to film.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) was his first feature film. Engaged by the effects team as a production illustrator, he designed V'Ger, the enormous living machine at the centre of the cloud threatening Earth, producing paintings of its exterior and of the approach to the chamber where the old Voyager probe rests.
The assignment opened a second career, and Mead went on to design the worlds of Blade Runner, Tron, 2010 and Aliens. He died in 2019.