Design Matters with Debbie Millman · Design Matters Media

Best of Design Matters: Es Devlin

April 21, 2025·1 hr 6 min·5 clips

Es Devlin describes falling into the Thames at two and how it defined her search for light in art.

In 2003, Es Devlin moves from London theatre toward concert design, and the episode follows what changes when the room gets much bigger. Sculpture, music, performers, and crowds all have to work in the same breath. Theatre still gives her the clearest language for it. She talks about people putting the ego down for the greater good, and that idea quietly steers the whole conversation. The audience is part of the work, too. Devlin comes back to the image of everyone keeping the balloon in the air, which makes performance feel less like a spectacle dropped onto a crowd and more like something people help hold up. Debbie Millman gives the thought room. Her questions move through Devlin's biography and career, then into the stranger question of what collaboration does to the person making the thing. Devlin answers with warmth and a bit of mischief. When she describes a concert seen through phones, she sees the sadness of less dancing, but she also wonders whether the filming is a kind of self-portrait. She does not rush to scold the woman filming herself all night. She tries curiosity first, which feels like the episode's cleanest lesson. The Sphere makes everything bigger. Its height, LED exterior, and curved interior screen turn the U2 project into something closer to an environment than a stage. Devlin does not claim the moment for herself. She names U2, Willie Williams, and Treatment as real partners in the work. Again and again, she talks as if art happens between people: theatre, concerts, strange audience habits, huge screens. Millman closes by placing the Cooper Hewitt exhibition and the show's long run around Devlin's wider life in design, memory, and useful work.

As heard by us

A thoughtful look at how stage design becomes large-scale collaboration.

Debbie Millman uses this conversation with S. Devlin to trace how a theatre designer's thinking extended into concert sets, moving from Beyonce and Jay-Z to Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, opera festivals, the Olympics, the Super Bowl, and The Sphere.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

For when you want stadium scale, collaboration, and a calm look at how spectacle gets made.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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