Matthew Cunningham
Matthew Cunningham is an American Industrial Designer widely known for his expertise in advanced vehicle design, brand futuring and feature film concept design.
Bridging the gap between science fiction and reality, Cunningham has over 20 years of experience in multiple global design industries including Entertainment, Automotive, Aerospace, Product, Architecture, and Urban Planning.
In the world of Hollywood, Cunningham has designed vehicles for directors like Steven Spielberg, Duncan Jones, and Jon M. Chu, including a fleet of self-driving cars, a high-speed train, and a fast-attack tank respectively. He led the design for several aircraft and submarines in the blockbuster Godzilla sequel, King of the Monsters. Other recent film and television projects include vehicle, prop, environment and special effects design for Star Trek: Picard, Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, Space Jam 2, Aquaman, The Suicide Squad, Borderlands, and the upcoming Russo Brother’s Amazon series,Citadel.
Cunningham has designed full-scenario brand narratives in collaboration with Marketing and Engineering teams, decades in the future, for companies like Toyota Motor Corporation, often producing expository short films for presentation to CEOs, like Akio Toyoda. One such concept emerged publicly in a new skin as the ‘E-Pallete’ for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Matthew spearheaded integral shipping concepts as a senior designer at Volvo Trucks, fueled by his extensive research into A.I. distribution systems, smart home technology, and robotics. This initiative contributed to Volvo’s recent ‘smart cities’ campaign which drew heavily from Cunningham's initial full-spectrum scenario proposals and design storyboards.
As a BMW sponsored post-graduate student, he developed avant garde form languages and vehicle topologies which directly prefaced BMW’s electric ‘I’ program and Next 100 projects. He has since provided in-studio design and digital modeling services for BMW, Volvo, Mack Trucks, Volkswagen Group, Hyundai, Peugeot, Mazda, and Karma Automotive.The eponymous Cunningham Syntax, an electric, ecological muscle car concept was recently spotlighted in Robb Report and Robb Report Singapore.
Cunningham's seminal work in Systems, Cities, and Sustainable mobility, has been featured in the Los Angeles Autoshow global competitions, Robocar 2057 and L.A. 2060 and in Wired’s 2009 article, It's Time for Cities to Favor People, Not Cars. He recently completed several Architectural Concept proposals for the NEOM project, Saudi Arabia’s 500 billion dollar megacity.
He is an alumni of both Pratt Institute’s industrial design and Art Center College’s Transportation design program, where he currently teaches Automotive Design. Cunningham is a former board member of The Art Directors Guild and an international lecturer on design and creative methods, having delivered keynote presentations in locations as far afield as China, India, and Greece.
