Directory Profile

Alex McDowell RDI is a storyteller and award-winning designer working at the intersection of emergent technologies and narrative media. In 2000 he originated the influential narrative design practice called world building.

He has designed productions for David Fincher, Steven Spielberg, Terry Gilliam, Timur Bekmambetov, Zack Snyder, and many other directors. He has designed for theater, animation and interactive media, social projects, and urban design. He has worked with MIT Media Lab, Volvo, the Cook Inlet Tribal Council, Nike, Future Screens NI, Ubisoft, Intel, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Spike Lee, Intel, Unity, the Bridge Institute, Dame Vivienne Westwood, Iggy Pop, the American Society of Civil Engineers, Amazing Seasun, the Sex Pistols, I-D Magazine, and Bob Dylan.

He is co-founder and creative director at Experimental Design, whose practice is focused on creating immersive future worlds threaded to the present for corporate, media and social change.

He is Professor of Practice at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts where he teaches world building as cross-disciplinary practice; William Cameron Menzies Endowed Chair of Production Design; Adjunct Faculty at the Dornsife Bridge Institute; and Director of the USC World Building Institute and Media Lab, engaged in artscience research in collaboration with the Bridge Institute to create a new visual language for molecular biology.

He is on the board of the UNL Carson School for Emerging Media, the Academy of Motion Pictures Science and Technology Council, the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, the UK CoSTAR Foresight Board, the National Academy of Science, Science and Entertainment Exchange and the Pancreatic Beta Cell Consortium. He is an Honorary Doctor of Public Policy at the Pardee Rand School. His awards include D&AD President’s Award (2013), Interaction Awards Future Voice Award (2014), Best International Collaboration, Ireland Education Awards, with Future Screens NI (2020). In 2006 he was appointed a UK Royal Designer for Industry.