McDowell started incorporating digital design into his design process with Fight Club. He sophisticated the process in 1999 with one of the first fully integrated digital design departments for Steven Spielberg's Minority Report, creating a realistic and intensely researched take on the world of 2054 that fulfilled the director's desire to immerse the audience in future technology. For Spielberg's The Terminal, he set up another cutting edge art department to push the limits of current film possibility. McDowell also created the fantastical world of Dr. Seuss' The Cat in The Hat and designed the miniature sets for Tim Burton's upcoming stop-motion animated feature, Corpse Bride.

He is currently immersed in Breaking and Entering, an original contemporary drama written and directed by Anthony Minghella in London, England.

McDowell graduated from Central School of Art during the height of London's punk years. He attributes his willingness to take risks and his expectations of collaborative artistic expression to the spirit of that era. In 1978, he founded Rocking Russian Design to design album covers and later, music videos for musicians of every persuasion. He produced consistently arresting work for over a hundred music videos that reflected his bent for experimentation and his love of music. He relocated in 1986 from London to Los Angeles where he began a prolific career as a production designer for commercials.

His commercial work afforded him interaction with cutting-edge directors and insight into filmmaking, and by the early 90s, he segued into film production design. He quickly accrued such credits as The Lawnmower Man, The Crow, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Fight Club and The Affair of the Necklace. His production design continues to be infused with the knowledge he acquired as a painter and graphic artist as exemplified by the visual coding, atmosphere, color, character, history and texture he applies to every film.

The synergy that emerged from the collaboration amongst designers, filmmakers, scientists and engineers during Minority Report inspired McDowell to launch Matter Art and Science. This uniquely networked group, committed to exploring the collaborative potential of design and engineering, art and science, is composed of members who have both a peripheral contact with pop culture and who are established at the top of their own fields.

McDowell makes his home in Los Angeles, with his wife, painter Kirsten Everberg, and their two children. Despite his very demanding schedule, he is active in public speaking, participating in many international design and film conferences.