Legendary Movie Poster Artist Drew Struzan Dies at 78
Image Courtesy of Jedi News
By Luis Zonenberg
The film industry has lost another legendary titan, one who made a multi-generational impact that is still felt today. While not an actor or a famous director, artist Drew Struzan created numerous iconic movie posters that captivated audiences worldwide. He designed more than 150 movie posters in his entire career, ranging from family films like Back to the Future to gritty sci-fi thrillers like Blade Runner. I figured it would be best to reflect on Struzan’s life and see how he captured the eyes of so many audiences around the world.
Drew Struzan was born on March 18, 1947, in Oregon City, Oregon. While little is known about his formative years, he earned his college degree at the ArtCenter College of Design, then located in West Los Angeles, California. In his first year of college, he got married and had his first child with future writer, Dylan Struzan. He worked his way through college by selling his artwork and accepting small commissions, receiving his Bachelor’s degree with honors in five years.
After graduating from college, Struzan remained in Los Angeles and got a job as a staff artist at Pacific Eye and Ear, a design studio. In an interview with the Orange County Register, Struzan admitted that he chose to work as an illustrator instead of an artist since, “I was poor and hungry, and illustration was the shortest path to a slice of bread, as compared to a gallery showing. I had nothing as a child. I drew on toilet paper with pencils — that was the only paper around. Probably why I love drawing so much today is because it was just all I had at the time.”
There, he began designing album covers for artists such as Black Sabbath, the Beach Boys, the Bee Gees, and Wind & Fire. He even designed the t-shirt George Carlin wore on the front and back cover of his 1974 album, Toledo Window Box. Probably his most famous album design was for Alice Cooper’s 1975 album, Welcome to My Nightmare, which Rolling Stone ranked among its list of the 100 Classic Album Covers! Despite how in demand he was, he was only receiving $150 to $250 per album cover.
Struzan later began working at Pencil Pushers, where he was mentored and learned the distinctive one-sheet style, which he would later adopt as his own. In 1977, fellow artist Charles White III asked Struzan for his help in designing a poster for the rerelease of the original Star Wars film. Struzan used oil pastels to paint the human characters, while White focused more on the mechanical details of the poster, such as starships and the designs of Darth Vader and C-3PO.
While employed by Pencil Pushers from the 1970s through the 1980s, Struzan helped produce poster art for many classic films like The Muppets Movie, First Blood, Coming to America, and The Goonies. During this time, Struzan continued his association with George Lucas by designing the original Industrial Light & Magic logo. He also continued to use the one-sheet artwork style for the Star Wars films and later for the Indiana Jones film series.
In the 1990s and well into the 2000s, the surge in computers and new digital technologies led to a decline in the demand for traditional poster art. Struzan worked to find other income sources, though he still got work designing posters for films like The Shawshank Redemption, Hook, Hellboy, and even Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. He continued to work for Lucas, designing posters for the Star Wars prequels and later Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull before his retirement.
He would later come out of retirement in 2015 to design posters for Batkid Begins: The Wish Heard Around the World and Star Wars: The Force Awakens. He later came out of retirement again in 2019 to design new posters for the How to Train Your Dragon trilogy in advance of the last entry, The Hidden World. It was during this time that Struzan had been in an ongoing battle with Alzheimer’s disease, though his wife would not reveal it until March of 2025. He died on October 13, 2025, at the age of 78. Struzan was an unsung hero in the film business, whose unique poster designs still capture the hearts and minds of audiences everywhere today.
