Alex McDowell is a production designer who has created environments for movies including The Crow, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Fight Club, Minority Report, The Terminal, Corpse Bride, Watchmen, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Man of Steel.
He has done graphic design work with musicians like The Clash, Iggy Pop, The Cure, Depeche Mode, Queen, Neil Young, Madonna, Michael Jackson, ZZ Top, and Aerosmith. He has produced commercials for brands like Nike, Coca Cola, Pepsi, Chanel, and Sony with director David Fincher.
Alex has won a San Diego Film Critics Society award in the Best Production Design category with Minority Report and an Art Directors Guild award for Excellence in Production Design for The Terminal. He is appointed Royal Designer for Industry by the RSA, the UK's most prestigious design society, and he’s been a Visiting Artist at the MIT Media Lab.
Currently Alex runs Experimental Design, powered by his “World Building” practice, doing innovation and design work for companies like Boeing, Ford, Volvo, and MoMA.
Chapters
00:00 Intro
04:08 Realizes that design is a job
09:20 Style, philosophy, method, narrative
13:45 “The only control you have…”
19:55 What is production design?
29:48 World building
35:10 Building worlds for a living
43:02 Collaborations
47:51 The teams who build worlds
51:17 Influences
54:04 The most amazing design products of all time
56:35 What’s next?
From the conversation:
Books
• How Innovation Works by Matt Ridley — https://link.amazon/B06CmR2m8
Projects and learning
• Future World Vision — https://futureworldvision.org
• Inner Space — https://exploreinnerspace.org
• JUNK — https://map.usc.edu/project/junk-worldbuild
• Our Future Ancestors — https://experimental.design/work/our-future-ancestors
• World Building Media Lab — https://worldbuilding.usc.edu
Designers and studios
• Barney Bubbles — https://barneybubbles.com
• Bruce Mau / Massive Change Network — https://www.massivechangenetwork.com/bruce-mau
• Greg Lynn FORM — https://glform.com
• Jamie Reid — https://www.moma.org/artists/68811-jamie-reid
• Jeffrey Linn / Conspiracy of Cartographers — https://conspiracyofcartographers.com
• Ken Adam Archive — https://ken-adam-archiv.de
• LAVA — https://l-a-v-a.net
• Malcolm Garrett — https://www.malcolmgarrett.com
• Neville Brody / Brody Associates — https://www.brody-associates.com
• Peter Saville — https://www.petersaville.com
• Timmy Ghiurau and Carlos Calva on Design Discipline — https://designdisciplin.com/p/oia
• Zaha Hadid Architects — https://www.zha.com
Film
• Minority Report — directed by Steven Spielberg — https://amblin.com/movie/minority-report
Tools and everyday design
• Butter — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butter
• Unity — https://unity.com
———
https://experimental.design | https://alexmcdowell.design | https://worldbuilding.institute
