Syd Mead, the legendary science fiction illustrator responsible for concocting the retro-futurist conceptual drawings that inspired movies like Blade Runner, Aliens, and Tron and other seminal sci-fi films, has passed away at age 86. 

Mead passed away in his Pasadena, California home on December 30, 2019 according The Hollywood Reporter. Mead’s death follows a three year struggle with lymphoma, according to Mead’s spouse, Roger Servick, THR reports. 

Mead studied at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena after three years of service in the United States Army, graduating in 1959. Following this period, he designed cars for Ford Motor Company’s Advanced Styling Studio before setting out on his own as a freelance illustrator, a career-altering trajectory that eventually situated him as a conceptual artist for Hollywood-produced films, including Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Blade Runner, Tron, Aliens, Mission to Mars, Mission: Impossible III, Elysium, and Blade Runner 2049, among many other films.

Mead’s visionary and evocative designs have inspired generations of sci-fi acolytes, a legacy that was most recently catalogued in the 2017 monograph The Movie Art of Syd Mead: Visual Futurist, a volume Mead co-wrote with architect Craig Hodgetts. In 2017, Hodgetts and Mead participated in a joint conversation supporting the publication at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, which is highlighted below: