Episode
Mikon van Gastel: Co-Founder of Sibling Rivalry on why presentation skills matter more than design skills
- Podcast
- Design Better
- Published
- Jan 6, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 1488
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/mikon-van-gastel
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Summary
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 2000’s, that changed forever with films like Seven and shows like Mad Men and Stranger Things. The title sequence became a prologue—a metaphor for the film itself. This is a preview of a premium episode. To listen to the full interview, head over to our Substack:https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/mikon-van-gastel Our guest today, Mikon van Gastel, was right there in the trenches of that revolution. After a 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—Mikon cut his teeth at the legendary studio Imaginary Forces. Today, Mikon is 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’ve built a reputation for work that blurs the lines between branding, storytelling, and architecture. In this episode, we explore the sheer scale of modern experience design. Mikon takes us behind the scenes of his work for the Sphere in Las Vegas—a venue he calls the “Champions League of content creation”. We discuss 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. Mikon opens up about the “sleepless nights” of running an agency in a project-based economy and how he refuses to transition fully into a management role, preferring to write treatments and stay hands-on with the work on nights and weekends. Whether you are designing software interfaces or directing films, Mikon’s philosophy on collaboration a…