Mikon van Gastel: Co-Founder of Sibling Rivalry on why presentation skills matter more than design skills

0:00Mikon van Gastel:I think it's the under-taught aspect of what it means to be a creative, be a designer, I feel is presentation skills. You can have amazing ideas. If you can't sell those ideas to a client, you are nowhere, right? So being able to present your ideas to your peers, defend your ideas to your peers, be open to critique and making the work better, those are all things that actually really benefited me later in life. There was a time when a movie title sequence was just the moment you grabbed your popcorn and waited for the real show to start. But in the mid-90s and early 2000s, that changed forever with films like Seven and shows like Mad Men and Stranger Things.

0:42The title sequence became a prologue, a metaphor for the film itself. Our guest today, Mikan van Gassel, was right there in the trenches of that revolution. After formative and intense education at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, where the only teachers were artists in residence and your toughest critics were your peers, Mekon cut his teeth at the legendary studio, Imaginary Forces. Today, he's the co-founder and chief creative officer of Sibling Rivalry, a hybrid brand studio and production company he founded with his best friend, Joe Wright. They built a reputation for work that blurs the lines between branding, storytelling, and architecture.

1:17In this episode, we explore the sheer scale of modern experience design. Mekon takes us behind the scenes of his work for The Sphere in Las Vegas. It's a venue he calls the Champions League of Content Creation. We talk about how to design for shared emotion, balancing the collective gasp of a 20 ,000-person audience with moments of intimate connection. We also dig into the business of creativity. Mekon opens up about the sleepless nights of running an agency in a project-based economy and how he just refuses to transition fully into a management role, preferring to write treatments and stay hands-on with the work on nights and weekends.

1:59Whether you're designing software interfaces or directing films, Mikan's philosophy on collaboration and stripping away the noise to serve the core idea is something we can all learn from. This is Design Better, where we explore creativity at the intersection of design and technology. I'm Eli Willard. And I'm Aaron Walter. If you're hearing this, you're not currently on our premium subscriber feed. Design Better Premium subscribers enjoy weekly episodes. That's four episodes per month rather than just two. And all of them are ad-free. Plus, you'll get an invitation to our monthly AMAs with the smartest folks in design and tech.

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3:19We'll return to the conversation after this quick break.

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3:42And now, back to the show.

4:08His name was Matt Kahn. You know, he wasn't well-known at the time, but he was definitely heavily invested in this sort of mid-century design movement. He did designs for Eichler and other well-known folks. And he was a really great critic. And his training, and I don't think he actually finished college, so he became, I think, the only professor at Stanford not to have a PhD. But in any case, he came through Cranbrook and was really versed in the Bauhaus School of Design and Creativity. I'm curious, did that survive into your education there at the time you went to Granbrook?

4:40Mikon van Gastel:The thing I share with him, I actually have an MFA, but I don't have a BFA. So I'm Dutch originally. I went to undergrad until the last year. In Holland at that time, this is the roaring 90s. That will date me. Deconstruction in design really took hold of the graduate schools in the United States and in the UK. not in Holland because there isn't really a graduate school culture there. And I was very busy designing books and posters in school and setting six-foot point footnotes and really not very excited about the kind of things I was making. And in the meantime, in these graduate schools, the work, the typography became extremely expressive, very much counter to what I was being taught, which was Swiss modernism.

5:33Mikon van Gastel:So I started to get really interested in what so many schools were doing. And the biggest influence was Emigre magazine. And it was a Cranbrook issue. It's a very famous issue. So I started to think about an escape plan. Like, how do I get away from Swiss modernism and start getting myself into a place where I can really express myself freely, especially topographically? And right at that time, I went to the U2 Zoo TV tour, which was the first real merging of entertainment, music, graphic design, animation, filmmaking, live feeds, everything into one incredible event. And I was like, oh my God, this is what I want to do.

6:19Mikon van Gastel:Not only do I want to be more expressive in my work, I also want to work in motion. I want to move away from the static frame. So I ended up not finishing school. I went on an exchange program. I applied to grad school. One of them was Cranbrook, always top of my list. And I ended up at Cranbrook. At first, they were like, well, we can't accept you because you don't have a BFA. I was like, well, Yale accepted me. And they're like, do you have proof of that? And I'm like, yeah, I do. They're like, okay, if they'll accept you, we'll accept you. So those were the best two years of my career, I would say.

6:56Mikon van Gastel:I mean, that was such a smart move. I, in the first year, unlearned everything I learned in four years of undergrad in Holland. And in my second year, I really focused on design and architecture and motion and filmmaking. And the rest is kind of history from there. And you brought up Bauhaus. What is amazing about Cranbrook and unique about Cranbrook is much like the original Bauhaus, there are no classes. There are no teachers. There's only artists in residence, which means that unless you're highly self-motivated, it's pretty much an impossible place to survive. So your toughest critics are your fellow students.

7:36Mikon van Gastel:And it's all about self-initiated work and then critiques where you hang up the work and it gets discussed by everyone and anyone that wants to be in that room at that time. So those two years, they really formed who I am as a thinker, as a maker, and how I approach my practice. What did you learn about critique from that experience? That seems like that must have been very formative. The Cranbrook Crit were kind of notorious. There was pretty much always someone who ended up in tears. I think it's the under-taught aspect of what it means to be a creative, be a designer or an architect, I feel is presentation skills.

8:16Mikon van Gastel:You can have amazing ideas. If you can't sell those ideas to a client, an art institution or a brand, whether it's a chief brand officer or a chief marketing officer, if you can't sell your ideas, you are nowhere, right? So being able to present your ideas to your peers, defend your ideas to your peers, be open to critique and making the work better. Those are all things that absolutely are 100 % right. That actually really benefited me later in life because there wasn't really ever a room that I was so intimidated by that I kind of shriveled. And that's because for two years, every time I put my work up, I was in front of a firing squad.

9:00Mikon van Gastel:So yeah, that's really helped for sure. So Mikan, after Cranbrook, maybe you're jumping around a little bit here, but you did work at Imaginary Forces for a period of time. And if folks aren't familiar, they developed some really iconic title sequences for movies like Seven, even Stranger Things and Mad Men, I think. And I'm curious, you know, those two latter ones are probably past your tenure there, but did you work on any of those original sequences that they really got well known for? Funny enough, I think it was in the beginning of my second year at Cranbrook is when Seven came out. Seven is really what made Imaginary Forces a household name.

9:38Mikon van Gastel:Kyle Cooper obviously designed that piece. It really reinvigorated the title sequence as a medium. Before that, people were getting their popcorn and their Coca-Cola while the title sequence was playing because it was nothing, right? It was just type overseen. In the case of Seven, it was really the start of the story. It was a metaphor for what was happening inside the serial killer's mind. And it was just executed with such beauty and precision. It was just incredible, right? And it made people aware of the title sequence again. And that was one of the reasons, is I was so, I was interested in motion.

10:16Mikon van Gastel:Not so much film, per se. It's like I've never had this desire to become a film director and go to, quote-unquote, Hollywood. but I was super excited about the idea of telling a story, a backstory in two and a half minutes for a feature film. So yes, when I went to Imaginary Forces, my first title sequence was Sphere, which I really enjoyed doing. And in many ways, if you look at the way that piece is structured, it's very crambrooky. It's all about expressive typography and typography that moves through an invisible sphere and changes its personality. It was actually very much based within theory, looking back at it, which is quite funny.

10:56Mikon van Gastel:But yeah, I did a few title sequences, and this is kind of a bit of a theme within my career, because everybody that came to Imaginary Forces wanted to do titles. I started to become interested in immersive spaces in architecture, and we started to get some opportunities in that space. So I ended up kind of pivoting away from doing titles. But the one I'm the most proud of is Fear, for sure. Tell us about the origin story of sibling rivalry. I worked at IF in the LA office for five years. Then I went to open the office in New York. And then I started a production company. That partner ended up going in real estate.

11:38Mikon van Gastel:I had met at that point Joe Wright, who was an amazing creative director. We became friends. and then as soon as my partner wanted out of the business, he was the first person I went to and I walked up to his office. He was actually working for the competition at that point and I was like, mate, you have no idea. Like, you know, my partner just quit and I'm thinking of closing the office and he walks out of his office. He looks to the left, he looks to the right. He goes, mate, what about if we start a business together? I'm like, okay. And this was like 2011, right? When the market was plummeting, we didn't even think about it.

12:18Mikon van Gastel:We just kind of started it. We broke the cardinal rule. I had a rule to never get into business with friends or family. He was my best friend. He came up with the name. I will forever credit him for it. It's a great name. We both have brothers. We are like brothers, but we're also still very competitive. Funny enough, we always have been and we still are. it really describes kind of the ongoing energy within the office, right? On the one side, you want a healthy rivalry. You know, you want people to want to win a pitch. You want them to lead a project, all of that good stuff. I think that's what we all grew up with.

12:53Mikon van Gastel:But at the same time, it's also very much a family business. It's a people business first. I really believe that. It was quite interesting yesterday, like someone in my office lost someone in his family he was very close to. and I called him up and he called me a couple of days ago. And he's like, hey, you didn't need to do that. You know, that meant so much to me. And I told him, I'm like, listen, it's a people business first. You know, of course I needed to call you. And I think that's the sibling part of it. You know, we're very thankful to have this group of people and you have to treat them well.

13:26We were talking before we started recording that a lot of our audiences in the software design world are designing interfaces, product experiences, not so much films, although probably some of them out there are working on films. But what can folks in that part of the industry learn from your approach to doing a campaign and storytelling and motion and those types of things?

13:48Mikon van Gastel:I think the interesting thing about the film industry, and I think it goes also into the immersive spaces world, is that you're forced to collaborate with experts, right? If you're a director of a film, you work with a cinematographer. He or she is the best at framing an image, the lensing, the kind of camera, all that kind of good stuff. You're working with product designers, production designers. You're working, obviously, with writers. The world of fashion gets introduced through the wardrobe. Art direction talks about the power of the object in a frame. But every head of that department is an expert in their field.

14:28Mikon van Gastel:And I think when you're working, for example, in immersive spaces also, it's very similar, right? All of a sudden you're talking to architects, interior designers, people that are experts in acoustics, materials, textures, all that good stuff. And so I think the collaborative aspect of that just makes any project richer and more interesting. So to me, collaboration is such a big part of making a project successful that I think it's really important to learn how to do that. And it's quite interesting. I have a 13-year-old and she's doing like a class project that's running throughout the whole year.

15:05Mikon van Gastel:And when you think about really what they're teaching is collaboration. And to watch her going through that process of losing votes on the name of the project. Or who does what and whose input is valuable. And how do we have a healthy discussion that doesn't hurt each other's feelings? How do we divide and conquer? What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? Right? All that kind of good stuff. It's so important to learn early because especially if you're working in complex fields like software, hardware, filmmaking, design, animation, collaboration is a key. The work that you're doing, it often boils down to a succinct message.

15:45And that's really hard to do in my experience. What are the principles that guide the work that you do in short form storytelling? How do you boil down the right message and then help the client kind of get on board with that?

16:01Mikon van Gastel:More isn't necessarily better, right? I mean, Joe would say less is more. He really believes in that. I'm probably, as a Cranbrook person, I'm not afraid of more. But I think it's very much about restraint. You know, we always say at the end of the day, we are an ideas company. We really believe that. I think we are not bound by any style. We were probably known for work that's sophisticated and cinematic and premium, although I can't really stand that word, but it's probably a word people would describe in regards to sibling rivalry as a brand. But I think at the end of the day, to us, whatever form a project takes or whatever the project looks like, it's completely secondary to the idea.

16:44Mikon van Gastel:And at that point, we do tend to strip away anything that's unnecessary or distracts from that core idea, especially when you start thinking about large spaces, immersive spaces, like, for example, Sphere, where we do all our HPE work. it's so easy to be seduced by the scale of it and oh my god we can do all these things and we can have immersive audio and things can move from left to right and from behind you to in front of you and but if it isn't serving the idea it just ends up being noise so I think it's very important to always be critical about what you put on the screen or what kind of behavior you're attached to something or what the audio is doing to help you focus the eye or guide the eye or focus the ear wherever it needs to be focused.

17:37Mikon van Gastel:So I think the choreography of all these things needs to serve the core, which is the idea. Listeners who are not familiar with the Saphir should definitely Google it. It's an experience in Vegas. There are live performances. There are films that are shown there that's just like a really immersive experience. I've yet to go, but it's definitely on my list of amazing places to visit. You have to go. I keep telling people, anyone that will listen, especially for musical performances, if you can stand the band, meaning if you really hate the band, don't go. But if you can stand the band, please go.

18:14Mikon van Gastel:I call it the Champions League of content creation. It is unlike anything else, and it's a real privilege actually to be able to work there. So I think that's the big difference between when we were doing experience design immersive spaces in the late 90s into early 2000s, it was very much about bolting technology into existing structures, right? And a lot of that technology wasn't even made to do what we tried to do with it. And there's a beauty in that. It's like MIT Media Lab at its best, right? Those are the kind of people we would collaborate with also. But now these spaces are purpose-built.

18:50Mikon van Gastel:They are built to do what you want them to do. The audio is immersive. There are physical effects. There's 360-degree screens. There's vibrating chairs. It's really made for performance and storytelling, and that is what makes it so exciting. It's the modern-day Stonehenge. Yes, 100%. Yes. Yeah. I want to just dig a little deeper into the client side of things. You mentioned this phrase that you're an ideas company, and that's presumably why clients come to you. And yet, sometimes big ideas can feel scary and uncomfortable. How do you guide brands into something brand new, something that expands where they've been in the past and become comfortable about thinking in new ways?

19:43Mikon van Gastel:To me, the most important thing, and we talk about this all the time, is whenever you pitch a client, talk about them. Don't talk about yourself. I think that does two things. I think it makes them feel like you understand them, that you understand their business, and most importantly, that you care about their business. I literally just got a text from my HPE client. He was in an all-company meeting, and he got an award for the work we've done together. And he's so excited. Again, it goes back to the human business. It's human relations, right? So I think once you're in there and now you're pitching the idea and they have a sense that they trust you, that they know that you care, right?

20:25Mikon van Gastel:I think you guide them along probably with a couple of ideas. An idea that's more safe, closer to where they've been. An idea that's really far off kilter and something in the middle. Let's be honest, right? And then you just bring them along that journey with you. And a lot of it is you have to really read the room. Like some clients, they get it. They've been there before. They maybe come from the agency side. They've been doing it for a while. And then there's other clients that you really have to handhold. And in that sense, like pre-visualization, storyboarding things out, which funny enough, we promised each other we wouldn't talk about AI.

21:06Mikon van Gastel:but AI is making all this stuff much easier. Being able to help them visualize the ideas really helps the decision-making process. And you have to respect it, right? There is so much pressure on the C-suite. The average lifespan of a CMO the last time I checked was 18 months. So for this person, they basically get one or two tries, bites at the apple. And if they don't work, they're out already. So just imagine that pressure on you, right? So you have to really guide them through that process because these decisions, they're major investments to them and they're major decisions for them personally also.

21:48I wanted to talk a little bit about designing for shared emotion. And you wrote a bit about this in a FASCO article recently. And we just talked about the sphere. I haven't been there either, but I would like to check it out. I have seen the Bellagio fountains, which I think are a wonderful experience in Vegas. I don't love Vegas, but some of these instances where they get people together to just like Cirque du Soleil or the fountains are wonderful. At the same time, we're facing this sort of loneliness epidemic where people are feeling really isolated and fractured. So maybe you could talk a little bit about that idea of designing for shared emotion and bringing people together.

22:20Mikon van Gastel:Yeah, it's super interesting. I mean, I have a teenage daughter and then a 13-year-old, and I'm sort of starting to sense that they're getting tired of the scroll. I think they're starting to look for physical experiences, shared experiences. And I don't think it's either or. I think it's both. When you think about, for example, something like Spear. If you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe at designbetterpodcast.com slash subscribe. Once you do, you'll get access to every full-length episode, all ad-free, monthly AMAs with inspiring people in design and tech, and recordings of all our past AMAs.

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