Designing the World’s Biggest Stages: Julio Himede on Risk, Authenticity, and the Art of Spectacle

At Canva Create 2026, interviewer Sam Fragoso sat down with stage designer Julio Himede, the creative force behind some of the most watched live events in the world: the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards, Eurovision, the Grammys, and the Super Bowl. Over the course of their conversation, Julio unpacked what it really takes to design stages that become cultural moments, and how risk, authenticity, and technology shape his work. For anyone young, creative, or just starting out, his journey offers a powerful roadmap.

Julio’s story starts with a leap most people do not take at 23. Fresh out of college, he landed on the design team for the opening and closing ceremonies of the Sydney 2000 Olympics. It was his first real job. The budgets were huge, the stakes even bigger, and there was only one live shot to get everything right. Every idea had to be prototyped, tested, and built in the real world. That experience did more than sharpen his technical skills. It taught him how critical communication and collaboration are on a massive production.

In one room full of designers, Julio remembers holding back an idea because he was too shy to share it. Minutes later, someone else voiced the same thought and got all the credit. It was a turning point. If you do not speak up, he realized, your ideas effectively do not exist. For young creatives watching him now, that moment is a quiet but powerful lesson. Your voice matters, but only if you use it.

More than a decade into his career, Julio made another high stakes choice. He left a comfortable life and solid network in Sydney to move to New York City in 2014. In Australia, he had community and steady work. In New York, he had almost no contacts. To rebuild from scratch, he went back to the hustle of his early twenties: cold emails, cold calls, knocking on doors. He would introduce himself, reference past work for YouTube, MTV, and Nickelodeon, and explain that he had just moved to the city.

Most of those messages went nowhere. Rejection and silence were part of the process. But the mindset mattered. Julio kept reminding himself that if he did not reach out, someone else would, and that someone else would get the job. That is the uncomfortable truth of creative careers. Comfort rarely leads to growth. Eventually, his persistence paid off. One of the first big United States milestones was designing the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards, a show he had grown up watching. For him, it felt like his own personal Super Bowl, a childhood obsession turned into a professional benchmark. It is exactly the kind of full circle moment many young people dream about.

When Sam asked how he thinks about his work visually, Julio described stage design as “painting the landscape.” He leans minimalist, often starting with a single bold gesture, a kind of brushstroke that cuts across the stage. He is less interested in stuffing the space with detail and more focused on creating compositions that feel meaningful, a little mysterious, and emotionally charged. The stage, in his hands, is not just a backdrop but a living canvas the audience moves through. For anyone just entering the creative world, it is a reminder that you do not need to do everything at once. One strong idea, well executed, can be more powerful than a hundred scattered ones.

Inside his New York practice, Yellow Studio, this thinking becomes a process he calls the “romantic period” of design. Before locking into a direction, he and his team give themselves permission to flirt with ideas, trying out different colors, shapes, and forms, falling in love with one concept one day and losing interest the next. Even under tight deadlines, he fights to protect this phase, because it is where the best work usually appears. Eventually, they have to commit to a single core concept, but they never show up to a client with just one option. They lead with their favorite idea, supported by one or two strong alternates, staying enthusiastic without telling the client which one they are secretly rooting for.

The power of communication and clarity shows up again when Julio talks about working with artists. He points to a tour with Shakira as an example of a collaboration that really worked. Shakira came in with a clear emotional message, resilience, anchoring the album. From there, Julio and his team built visual ideas around that theme. In their very first meeting, they presented concepts she could connect to emotionally, not just aesthetically. That kind of alignment, he explains, is what turns a good show into a meaningful one. For young designers, it is a reminder to look beyond the surface. The best work comes when you understand what something is supposed to feel like, not just what it should look like.

Authenticity emerged as one of the strongest threads in the Canva Create 2026 conversation, especially around Julio’s work on a Super Bowl performance with Benito (Bad Bunny) and other Latin artists. Instead of stylizing everything into abstract shapes or slick minimal motifs, the team chose to be fully authentic to Puerto Rico and the Latin community. If a taco vendor appeared on stage, it needed to feel like a real vendor. If there was a car, it had to look and feel real, not a distant, polished symbol of one.

For Julio, who grew up in Australia but is deeply Latin, that project became personal. He said that in the last five years, he feels like he has finally “come out” with his Latinness, letting it show up unapologetically in his work. For young people navigating multiple identities or cultures, that honesty is powerful. You do not have to hide the parts of you that feel different. Those might be the very parts that make your work unforgettable.

One detail from that Super Bowl show has since taken on a life of its own: the grass costumes. What started as a logistical decision quickly became a cultural moment. The costumes exploded online as memes, jokes, and screenshots, and Julio still gets emotional seeing how something so practical ended up resonating far beyond the stage. It is a reminder that you can never fully predict what will catch fire, and that sometimes the solutions you come up with under pressure are the ones people remember most.

Of course, at an event like Canva Create 2026, the conversation had to touch on technology and artificial intelligence. Julio’s position is clear. Ideas should come from humans, and technology should follow. His studio uses technology all the time, and increasingly artificial intelligence, but only as a way to enhance ideas, not to generate them from scratch. The sequence is non negotiable. First decide what you want the audience to feel, then reach for the tools that help bring that feeling to life. The risk is not the technology itself, he suggests, but the temptation to let the tool dictate the story.

Taken together, Julio’s journey from Olympic stadiums to the Super Bowl stage offers a playbook for creatives working at any scale, especially young people standing at the edge of their own careers. Speak the idea, even when you are unsure. Take the uncomfortable risk, whether it is moving cities, changing paths, or sending a cold email that scares you a little. Protect the messy, romantic period where you flirt with possibilities and let yourself dream without limits. Lead with authenticity, especially when culture and identity are at stake. And use technology, including artificial intelligence, as a powerful tool, not the author of your work.

From his first live show in Sydney to his conversation at Canva Create 2026, Julio Himede keeps returning to the same core question. How can a stage make people feel something real. For young readers watching his path, the answer is both simple and challenging. Start where you are. Say what you see. Trust what makes you different. And keep building, one brave idea at a time.