Alex McDowell

This production designer seemingly has taken up the baton dropped by the late Anton Furst: McDowell's dark, eerie and entertainingly foreboding sets sometimes get better reviews than their films. The boyish-looking Brit opened his own graphics design firm in the late 1970s after studying at London's Central College of Art. He began his career designing album covers and posters before segueing to creating sets for music videos directed by Tim Pope and finding wider audiences with TV commercials (Revlon, Pepsi, Nike) and music videos for performers like ZZ Top, Aerosmith and Michael Jackson. He gained particular notice for his starkly beautiful design of the David Fincher-directed video "Vogue" (1990) for Madonna.