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Drew Struzan died exactly one year ago today, on October 13, 2025. He was 78.
You may not know the name. You know the work. If a painted movie poster ever made you want to see a film before you knew a thing about it, there’s a good chance he painted it.
I do know the name. It’s mine too. Drew and I are related, and I’ve been proud of that for as long as I can remember.
The Man Behind the Posters
For anyone who hasn’t heard of him yet, here’s the short version.
Drew was born in Oregon in 1947 and moved to Los Angeles in the 1960s to study at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. He started out in the early 1970s painting record album covers: the Bee Gees, Black Sabbath, Iron Butterfly, Earth, Wind & Fire, Alice Cooper. An album cover gives you twelve inches by twelve to work with, and he enjoyed painting inside that limit.
Then came 1978, and a poster for the re-release of the first Star Wars film, which he illustrated alongside Charles White III. Luke and Leia swinging across the Death Star chasm was Drew’s. George Lucas was impressed enough that Drew became the go-to artist for Star Wars and Indiana Jones posters for decades afterwards.
The rest reads like the shelf of a very good video store: the Back to the Future trilogy, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Blade Runner, The Goonies, Hook, the Muppet movies, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. More than 150 films across nearly five decades. The magician in the Industrial Light & Magic logo is his as well.
By his own account, he got there sideways. “I kind of fell into doing movies because of my portrait work,” he said in 2004, “since portraits are considered the hardest things among artists.”
A World at a Glance
When he died, Lucasfilm published a tribute, Remembering Drew Struzan. It’s short, and worth reading in full. This is George Lucas in it:
His creativity, through a single illustrated image, opened up a world full of life in vivid color…even at a glance.
That’s the best description of the job I’ve read. A poster gets a glance. You get a second, maybe two, to promise someone an adventure, and Drew could do it with a face and some light.
Lucasfilm’s piece ends on the same thought: that he’ll be remembered for “offering that first exhilarating glimpse” of what a storyteller has waiting for you.
It Runs in the Blood
I’ve always had a strong creative drive. I don’t mean a hobby. I mean the kind that doesn’t leave you alone until you’ve made the thing.
It isn’t hard to guess where that came from. Art must run in my blood.
I’m an artist too, though not in traditional media the way Drew was. My work is digital: 2D and 3D art, technical art, game art and motion graphics.
My first game came out when I was ten, on a floppy disk in my father’s computer shop, and I’ve been building ever since: apps, games, virtual sets, the occasional circuit board. I said it in I Am CoreyX and I’ll say it again here: creativity has always been my real passion. The engineering is how I get it out.
A Poster in His Style
When Kohaku and I were making Kohaku’s World, our mixed-reality live show, the show needed a poster. I knew exactly how I wanted it to look.
Drew was retired by then, so I commissioned one in Drew’s style. The artist Jason Kincaid painted it: a big portrait in the middle, a cast gathered around it, warm light on one side and lightning on the other.
Here it is as a pencil sketch, on the easel, and finished.
The cast is Kohaku, Data from Star Trek, Yoda, a dragon, a DeLorean and a talking hamburger. Drew painted a DeLorean once himself, for Back to the Future.
It’s a tribute, and not a subtle one. It was never meant to be.
Jason had a surprise for us, too. Along with the poster came a bonus: an original piece of his own, also in Drew’s style, of The Goonies.
It’s a prized possession, and it could hardly be more personal if it had my address on it. The Goonies was filmed in Oregon, where I’m from. One of its stars is a Corey: Corey Feldman. And it’s drawn in the style of a Struzan, who painted that film’s poster himself.
That’s my home state, my first name and my last name, all in one drawing.
The Very Next One
Drew didn’t play favorites with his own work.
“If I had a favorite, then I would have already done the best I can do,” he told Los Angeles Magazine in 2013. “My favorite is always the very next one.”
I’ve shipped a lot of projects, and I can’t think of a better way to look at any of them. I know which one is my favorite, too.
One year on, his posters are still doing their job: promising an adventure to whoever glances at them.
If you’ve only ever glanced, do him a favor and look properly. His work is at drewstruzan.com. Find a poster you grew up with and give it a few minutes.
I’m proud to share his name. I’m still working on living up to it.
