Jason Lyons

My career spans Broadway, regional theater, opera, and academic mentorship. I started Designing Stories to do what most design education doesn’t: teach the emotional, conceptual, and collaborative fluency that actually builds careers.

Mentorship isn’t a side job

After decades of designing across multiple genres, one of the most consistent throughlines in my career has been teaching and mentorship. Whether in formal classrooms or tech tables, post-show debriefs or coffee chats at LDI, the most meaningful growth — for students, collaborators, and even me — has always come from honest, curious, process-driven conversation.

As I’ve moved in and out of academia and met students and educators at USITT and LDI, I kept hearing the same thing: people are craving connection. Not just technical training or portfolio advice, but real conversation around process, purpose, and creative identity.

Why Designing Stories exists

Designing Stories isn’t just an educational offering. It’s a creative ecosystem — a place to sharpen your craft, dig deeper into your personal aesthetic, and learn to articulate your vision with confidence and clarity. A space where process is valued as much as product, and where community isn’t a buzzword. It’s the foundation.

It isn’t a school. It’s a studio — built for designers who want to develop voice, not just skill.

How the work is structured

Everything starts from the same question: not which button to press, but why you’re pressing it. The library covers that ground at your own pace — courses, workshops, and books that move from technical competence toward creative clarity. Memberships add the parts that only happen with other people in the room: critique, live sessions, and direct feedback.

If you’re looking to grow — not just as a technician or artist, but as a storyteller, a collaborator, and a leader — I hope you’ll join me.

— Jason