How Concert Production Design Works: A Step-by-Step Breakdown
Most people watching a major concert see lights, video, and stage design as a seamless whole. What they don't see is the months of creative development, technical drafting, vendor negotiation, and collaborative programming that make any of it possible.
Sooner Routhier has spent her career building exactly that. A two-time Parnelli Award winner, Live Design Achievement honoree, and Live Production Summit Pinnacle recipient, she's the principal designer behind shows for Coldplay, Panic! at the Disco, The Weeknd, KISS, Imagine Dragons, The Lumineers, Muse, Green Day, Noah Kahan, and many more. In 2022 she launched The Playground, a creative collective that brings together independent designers, programmers, and content creators to build major touring productions.
In her Giggs Mentor Masterclass, Sooner walked through The Playground's full production design process from first contact to opening night — using a fictional pop star named Bishop and his imaginary designer Cleo to illustrate how the whole thing actually works. What follows is drawn directly from that session.
Step One: The First Call
Every production starts with a conversation. The initial meeting pulls in whoever is available from the artist's camp — manager, creative director, production manager, tour manager, sometimes the artist themselves — to discuss what the show needs to be.
The questions in that first call set the foundation for everything that follows. Is there a new album? Is there a brand story being built around it? What inspired the writing process, and how does the artist want to represent that on stage? Is this a career retrospective — a legacy act looking back across decades — or something forward-looking and new?
"We need to know what they want for creative on their stage," Sooner said. But equally important is the question most creative teams dread asking: what's the budget?
Sooner asks for it every time, directly. "We are in the music business, not the music fun times. We need to be in budget. People need to make money, they need to pay their bills. Yes, rock stars don't make as much money as we all think."
Getting a real number upfront prevents the painful process of presenting a design that's three times what the tour can afford and then having to cut it back. "No one likes to give somebody candy and then take it away."
The first call also covers logistics: how is the tour moving? Is it buses and trailers, 30 semi trucks, or cargo containers crossing an ocean? Who are the point people for communication? When are rehearsals, and when is the first show?
Step Two: Research and Mood Boarding
Once the creative brief is established, the team goes deep on the artist — past work, current branding, visual language, what they love, what they hate. Pinterest boards, Google image searches, album artwork, press photography. The goal is to build a visual reference library that starts pointing toward what the show could look like.
AI has become a meaningful part of this phase at The Playground. When the right reference image doesn't exist anywhere on the internet, Sooner's team generates it.
"I'll put a prompt in and say I'm looking for a white oak panel wall with white LED neon embedded in it. I'll get those pictures and just mess with the prompts until we get the right mood references."
For the fictional Bishop project — an artist who loves natural textures, fabric, paper, and journaling — the team landed on a central concept: crumpled paper looks like rock. What if the scenic centerpiece was something that read as both at the same time? AI-generated imagery helped them visualize what that could look like floating above a stage before a single drawing was made.
Step Three: The Business Layer (Running in Parallel)
While the creatives are researching and concepting, the business side of the project is already moving. Contracts, invoices, and insurance don't wait for the design to be finished — they run alongside it.
Sooner was direct about why this matters: "You need to be protected and your artist needs to be protected. You need to be paid for your work. You don't do this for free. This is your livelihood."
At The Playground, the creative and business tracks run simultaneously. One side is building mood boards; the other side is setting up the legal and financial infrastructure that makes the project possible to execute.
Step Four: Drawing the Show
The first drawings are not polished. They're not meant to be.
"There's no one way to draw or render. The biggest thing is you need to be able to explain your ideas. Is it crayon on paper? Is it a pencil sketch? I use Vectorworks a lot."
At this stage, the goal is to get the concept into three-dimensional space — to check scale, to test whether the idea actually fits on a stage, to start a conversation between designers about shapes and structure. Low-poly Vectorworks files. Wireframes. Basic geometry with no textures. These aren't being shown to the artist; they're internal working documents for the design team.
"If I'm talking to a co-designer, maybe they'll say 'I don't like that curve, let's make it a V.' We take these drawings and ship them back and forth to see where we want to go."
Once the internal team has locked the concept, those working drawings go to the renderers — who turn them into photorealistic images the artist can actually react to.
The standard approach at The Playground: always present both a white model (grayscale, no textures) and a full color photorealistic render. Sometimes people can read a design better in black and white. It gives the client two different ways to see the same thing.
Step Five: The Presentation
The proposal deck is comprehensive. Reference images, grayscale models, full-color renders, and — as the project develops further — a show direction document that maps out every song in the set: colors, content, lighting cues, automation moments, IMAG effects, camera blocking, SFX notes, cast notes.
"The initial proposal ends up becoming a bit of a show bible. We keep building upon it and building upon it so that the entire layer of the show is done by the time we get into pre-viz."
The Panic! at the Disco proposal Sooner shared in the session ran through the entire set list with specific looks for each song — what content was playing, what lighting palette was being used, what the artist was doing on stage at each moment. That level of detail exists for a reason: the more comprehensive the proposal, the better the artist understands what they're agreeing to — and the better the pitch competes.
"It's very rare for us to get a show when we're up against other designers if we only do renders and a little description. The more comprehensive it is, the better they understand it."
On the question of protecting creative work during the pitch process: Sooner acknowledged this is real. Ideas do get taken. The Playground tries to get a pitch fee upfront when possible, and when that's not available, the collective talks through whether the potential project is worth the risk of speccing it.
"Your time is valuable and these are your creative ideas. You've all spent good money learning these things. It's important to be paid for them."
Step Six: Tech Plots and Vendor Bids
Once the design is accepted, the drawings move into technical production. Tech plots are the detailed overhead documents that show every piece of gear, every truss position, every console at front of house, every cable run, every lighting position — the full technical blueprint for realizing the design.
Critically, the plots include a liability disclaimer. The designers are not structural engineers, electricians, or architects. The plots show what they want; the vendors, riggers, and crew who receive them are responsible for determining how to make it structurally sound.
Vendor bids happen in collaboration with the production manager. The PM decides who to approach, and competitive bids — often three or more — come back with quotes and sometimes substitution requests.
"A vendor will say 'I've got this type of spotlight on the shelf, I don't have what's in your plot, are you okay with substituting?' We evaluate it, we see if it works, we say yes or no."
Quotes go to management and the PM, a vendor is awarded the job, and the gear build begins.
Step Seven: Pre-Vis
Pre-visualization — or pre-vis — is where the show gets built virtually before anyone steps into a venue.
"It's basically a 3D version of the show that runs through pre-vis software. We pre-program the entire show on a computer in a studio — pre-vis, video-game style."
The first one or two days of studio time are setup only. Loading content into video servers, building the show file, placing songs in the Q stack, striping time code. "The more you can set up on day one and two, the easier the rest of the process goes."
From day three onward, the team starts programming songs — building the lighting looks, dropping in content, watching everything together to check cohesion. "You don't want to — well, maybe if it's Christmas — but you really want to make sure you're working together in tandem so that the show looks cohesive and everything is tied up in a nice little bow."
For programmers specifically, Sooner had a direct message: the industry needs more of them. "If you want to be a programmer, always hit up designers with your work. The most important thing is to show the musicality of a show. There are not a lot of people that do what you do."
How Long Does All of This Take?
It depends entirely on the scale of the show and how much lead time the team gets — but Sooner was clear about what's realistic.
A TV performance can compress to one or two weeks. Saturday Night Live was done in a week. An arena tour needs a minimum of two months, and even that "is really difficult to get done and costs the artist a lot of money because there's rush charges." Stadium shows take significantly longer — Coldplay's Music of the Spheres World Tour started in 2020 and launched in March 2022.
Six weeks' notice for an arena tour has happened. So has a full year of lead time. The earlier the conversation starts, the better the show — and the lower the cost.
Designing for Scale: Arenas, Stadiums, and Everything In Between
A question about the difference between arena and stadium shows prompted one of the more practical answers of the session.
The honest reality is that most major tours aren't purely one or the other. Booking agents increasingly route hybrid tours — arenas, amphitheaters, and stadiums on the same run. So The Playground designs for scalability first.
"We really try our hardest to design shows that can expand and contract as much as possible."
That means specifying IP65-rated gear (weatherproofed for outdoor use) wherever possible, and building a design around a central element that travels to every venue, with add-ons for larger configurations. It also means thinking carefully about what happens when the same show that looked one way in an arena needs to fill the scale of a stadium.
Theater-scale shows remain Sooner's personal favorite. "The at-size show is still my favorite medium."
Key Takeaways
Get the budget in the first meeting — always. Designing without a number leads to wasted time and difficult conversations later.
The creative and business tracks (contracts, invoices, insurance) run simultaneously from day one, not sequentially.
Early drawings are working documents for the internal team, not artist presentations — low-poly and rough is fine at this stage.
Always present both white model and full-color renders; some clients read design better in grayscale.
The proposal deck becomes the show bible — keep building on it through vendor bids, pre-vis, and rehearsals until every song is mapped.
Comprehensive proposals win pitches; renders plus a description usually aren't enough when competing against other designers.
Try to get a pitch fee upfront — creative time and expertise have real value and should be compensated.
Pre-vis setup days are critical; the more that gets configured in days one and two, the smoother the programming phase goes.
Arena tours need at minimum two months of lead time; less than that means rush charges and compromised results.
Design for scalability — most major tours mix venue types, so build a show that can expand and contract rather than one fixed configuration.
Tools Worth Knowing
For those looking to build skills in production design and programming, Sooner mentioned several platforms worth learning:
MA3 (grandMA3) — the industry-standard lighting console; essential for anyone pursuing programming. Depence and Capture — pre-vis software used across the industry. Vectorworks — 3D drafting for production designers. Procreate on iPad — for hand-sketching design concepts. Disguise (d3) — for video server and media server work. Midjourney (via Discord) — AI image generation for mood boarding when the right reference doesn't exist.
Resources: Sooner recommended Aria on the Run on Instagram for MA3 training, and noted that YouTube has substantial free resources for most of the above tools.
About the Guest
Sooner Rae Routhier is a principal production designer and the founder of The Playground, a Nashville-based creative collective specializing in concert touring production design. A two-time Parnelli Award winner and multi-Top Dog honoree, her work spans lighting and production design for Coldplay's Music of the Spheres World Tour, Panic! at the Disco, The Weeknd, KISS, Imagine Dragons, The Lumineers, Muse, Green Day, Noah Kahan, Matchbox Twenty, and many more. She is also a co-founder of EVEN, an organization focused on diversity, inclusion, and mentorship in the live events industry, and a member of the Giggs advisory board. More at soonerrae.com.
