Alex McDowell, RDI (born 11 April 1955) is a British narrative designer and creative director. McDowell is a designer working in narrative media. He is a strong advocate of world building and immersive design and integrates digital technology and traditional design technique in his work. He has created a holistic design process that incorporates ideation, inception, prototyping, and production for tangible story worlds. Early work Alex McDowell was born in Borneo, to British parents. His father, H Blair McDowell, was an engineer for Royal Dutch Shell, and his brother, Jonathan McDowell, is a London-based architect at Matter. He attended Quaker boarding schools from age 7 to 18. McDowell wanted to become a painter from an early age, and studied fine art at the Central School of Art and Design in London where in 1975 he and Sebastian Conran staged the Sex Pistols first headline concert. The consequent immersion into the London punk scene led to designing and printing T-shirts for Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood's legendary King's Road shop Sex. With musician Glen Matlock, he founded graphic studio Rocking Russian Design in 1978, which is where Neville Brody started his career. McDowell designed album covers for punk rock groups and a wide variety of musicians including Rich Kids, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Clash, and Iggy Pop. In 1979, McDowell was commissioned to design Pop's Soldier album. Iggy asked him to make his first three music videos for Soldier, and so, a year before the launch of MTV, and knowing very little about the role, McDowell became a production designer. In 1981 he co-founded design studio Da Gama, alongside typographer and designer John Warwicker, the first studio in London to simultaneously art direct record sleeves and art direct/direct videos for bands. He began to work with director Tim Pope, designing a famous series of videos for The Cure, among many others. Pope and McDowell traveled widely with many bands, making a video with Depeche Mode at the Berlin Wall, with Queen in Munich, and Neil Young in California. Gradually his production design work overtook his work as graphic designer until in 1986 he moved permanently to Los Angeles to work in the burgeoning music video and commercials industry in Hollywood. During the late 1980s and 1990s, he designed the sets for over one hundred music videos including artists like Madonna, Michael Jackson, ZZ Top, Aerosmith and others. He moved from