Louis Henry Mitchell on Creativity, Purpose and AI

Photo Credit: Julian Wass

By Tahlia Norrish

If you’ve ever watched Sesame Street and felt a sense of joy, belonging, or unexpected emotion, chances are Louis Henry Mitchell had something to do with it. As the creative director of character design at Sesame Workshop, Mitchell has spent decades shaping not just beloved characters but the way generations of children see themselves. 

Mitchell is also the founder of The Spiritstorm School and author of the upcoming memoir/creative guidebook, Qreative Evolution. 

Here we speak to Mitchell about a day in the life as a character designer, reckoning with AI and much, much more. 

Key Takeaways:

• Louis Henry Mitchell credits his lifelong creative journey to preserving his childlike wonder and being nurtured by mentors who encouraged his inner spark.

• His career was built on persistent outreach and a deep love for the arts, despite early shyness and self-doubt, showing the power of courage in creative connection.

• Mitchell views AI as a useful tool but ultimately believes that human emotion, experience, and purpose-driven storytelling will always surpass machine-generated content.

In some ways, your journey sounds like a fairy tale: Jim Henson and Kermit the Frog lit the creative spark for you at six years old; now you’re the creative director of character design at Sesame Workshop. How do you make sense of this unfolding? 

I believe that what we are meant to do is hidden within our hearts in our childhoods. In my case, I just adored The Muppets from the moment I first saw them on TV, and that love increased every time I watched them. But what I believe was really happening was discovering what I would pursue in the future. Of course, I couldn’t have known that at the time, but I did feel a very special connection when I saw The Muppets and other children’s programming back then. I was being introduced to a unique creative awakening—the very spark of what comes with being a child witnessing the joy others bring by doing what they love.

The way I personally make sense of how this all unfolded is that I had a great, nurturing mother who kept telling me to “Just keep going,’’ whenever the naysayers tried to discourage me. This was especially true when one of the main naysayers was me! I was able to keep that child’s heart alive into my adulthood. I brought the sense of wonder, exploration, fun, and the love of what inspired me into adulthood. A lot of people are talked out of that initial child-like faith and joy. I was fortunate enough to have the kind of mother and a few teachers who encouraged and protected me during my process of discovering what I love to do. Because it was preserved through childhood into adulthood, I still enjoy that heart of me as a child. In fact, my greatest mentor is 6-year-old me. I keep a picture of him next to me at Sesame Workshop as well as in my home studio to remember who I really am.

How did you go about building relationships and finding work when you were first starting out? 

Those early years were challenging because I was particularly shy, especially about my artwork. But, because I loved what I was trying to learn to do, I would reach out and take the chance that some artists would respond with some encouragement. I first began to reach out when I was 12 years old. I wrote to Chic Young, the cartoonist who gave us the “Blondie” comic strip. I loved how it was drawn and written. I wrote to Mr. Young and received a package from his son, Dean Young, who had taken over the strip. I was astounded that I would get a response.

So I started reaching out to more artists, and most of the time, it worked. I wrote to Norman Rockwell when I was 18 years old, and although he was ill, his nurse wrote back to me and said he liked my letter very much. It meant the world to me that Mr. Rockwell heard my name and how much he meant to me. When I became a Member of the Board of Trustees at The Norman Rockwell Museum, I asked about my letter to him, and they found it! He kept my letter, and they showed it to me from their archives. I now have a copy of it in my studio. 

Other attempts to reach out to artists led me to ask for a job at The New York Comic Art Gallery when I was in high school. The owner, Mark Rindner, had just opened and couldn’t afford to hire me, so I was paid with a few of the current comic books that came out each week. While there, I saw so much original comic art and met so many famous comic book artists. Although still shy, my persistence in working there got me close to my heroes, and eventually, Mark recommended me to one of his comic artist friends, Howard Chaykin, who needed an assistant.

He hired me, and that started me in the field of comics and advertising artwork when I was 17. I kept writing to other artists all through high school and college. This led to reaching out to The Jim Henson Company to see if I could work on Sesame Street. It took 8 months, and I almost gave up, until a man named Jim Mahon saw my portfolio and gave me a job as a freelancer, which eventually led to Sesame Workshop asking me to work for them full time. It was always about becoming the best artist I could be and reaching out to show my work—even though I was painfully shy. But I just had to learn and meet those I admired who made it. 

Wow! If we look at the latter of these—Sesame Workshop—what does a typical day look like for you as the creative director of character design? Is there such a thing? 

This is a question I get asked so very often, and the answer is as you anticipated—there is no such thing as a typical day. It’s always interesting and never predictable. There are products that come in from all over the world to review—books, toys, games… I could be working on sketches to design a new Sesame Street Muppet and then get a call to travel internationally to direct a photoshoot. I could be correcting the illustrations of a children’s book and suddenly be asked to design a new Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon. Although those are extreme examples, they all happened and represent the span and variety of the unpredictable work I am grateful to do. And it never feels like work, which is such a beautiful gift.

I remember one time, Google reached out for Sesame Street’s 40th Anniversary, and I had to pose the characters within the Google logo, which took over 7 hours… And I loved every second. I don’t even remember eating lunch that day. Again, that is an extreme, but my “work” really is a beautiful rollercoaster where the tracks change from one day or moment to the next, and it is just the best. 

Fear and doubt are common obstacles creatives face, especially in the early days. How do you advise emerging artists to navigate such encounters? 

This is a very delicate question because when I am asked to give advice, I always say I haven’t earned the right to if I don’t know who I am giving it to. I need to know the specific fears and doubts individuals are facing because they can be so different from one person to the next.

The way I overcame it was through the persistence I described earlier. I tried to use fear and doubt as fuel or to motivate me toward pushing ahead and “doing it afraid,” as I have heard it put. But that may not work for everyone. I can say that when fear and doubt rise, people should try to think about what they are fearing and why. I learned that doubt, as real as it feels, is often not based on reality. It’s great to have a tribe of people who encourage you.

There will always be people available to discourage you, but those who would encourage you are also available if you seek them out by paying attention to how they respond to you. A phrase I mention in my book, Qreative Evolution, is, “Those who don’t believe in you will try to protect you from your process. Those who do believe in you will support you through your process.” In other words, if you trip and fall while trying to do something you love, some naysayers will say, “See? You should know better than to even try doing that!” But those who are true tribe members of your progress will say something like, “Let me help you up so we can figure out why you tripped, so you can learn from it and maybe get it right next time.”

I don’t recommend trying to get past fear and doubt alone. Sometimes, we are hardest on ourselves when we really need encouragement. If there is no one immediately available, I have reached for books by people like Norman Rockwell or watched interviews by Jim Henson to help me reset my pattern of thinking toward positive and productive thoughts. 

On positive and productive thoughts, there’s some concern that advancements in AI will come to the detriment of storytellers and artists. How are you thinking about the effect of these emerging technologies? 

I actually believe they are wonderful tools, but that they should not be used to replace human creativity. The lightning-fast gathering of information from AI is not the same as speaking from the heart after going through a series of real human emotions. I recently spoke at The School of Visual Arts in New York City. Before my talks, I go to a coffee shop near the venue and prepare myself. Before heading over, I try to write a message just for the audience I will be addressing. I always want to make each talk different, specific, and personal. In this case, one of the last questions was about AI. This is a portion of what I shared:

“Human creativity is born from the human condition and our organic experiences. It’s our enthusiasm and passion and, ultimately, our ability to love that will always keep us above technology no matter how advanced it gets. More than ever, your dedication to telling stories, reading the classics, and developing yourself as a human being is your vital advantage. AI, as astounding and powerful as it increasingly is, is like fire. Powerful and beautiful and, simultaneously, potentially all-consuming and destructive. If abused, and in many ways it already is, it can rob the abusers, and humankind in general, of human functionality and life progress. As humans, we are meant to create. As fun and fulfilling as creativity is, it is also necessarily costly, frustrating, and even painful at times. AI can’t experience any of that and never will, and that is our eternal advantage.”

I believe it will become evident to those who embrace AI so wholeheartedly that they will value human contributions more than mechanical or digital ones to resonate with who we really are as human beings. New opportunities are opening up with AI and the goods and services surrounding it, but one of the best things happening overall is individual artists are no longer beholden to the big companies to try and get their work published. Technology has placed complete production studios into the hands of anyone who has a smartphone.

Starting a YouTube Channel, among other things, is the new way new generations of creatives can share their content. And there is no one to get in their way and hold them back or exploit their work. It’s a new era, and, like so many others, there are ways to make it work for those who are willing to keep themselves strong and healthy as human beings while examining how they can learn the new tech. The limitations I had when I started are no longer. The possibilities are virtually endless.

You designed Julia, the first Sesame Street character with autism. How does—and has—your own identity shaped your creative expression? 

When I work with established characters, I find the piece of them that is within me, so I become one with them. When I design a new character, I put some part of myself into the character. In Julia’s case, it was my love for the little student I was paired with when my dear friend, Rachel Lunden-Carter, saw in me the ability to help children she taught in her class who were on the autism spectrum. The feelings of connecting with someone non-verbal showed me how words aren’t always necessary to make a connection. I learned so much, and it grew me in such a way that Julia flowed from my hand through the pencil and into the little-girl Sesame Street Muppet so many love and are inspired by.

What I do for Sesame Street is not a job to me. It is a calling—a mission to bring my very best self to everything I am assigned and deliver it through these beloved characters trusted by so many all over the world. Because of artists like Jim Henson and Norman Rockwell leaving behind such a generous wealth of wisdom, knowledge, creativity, and love, I was inspired with a work ethic that helps me to this very day to give my very best in all I get to do.

Finally, you’ve been interviewed many times in your career. What’s a question you haven’t yet been asked—or are rarely asked—you would love to answer? 

I’d love to answer the question, “What would I have done in my career if there was never a Sesame Street or any Muppets at all?”

The answer is because of my love, belief in, and respect for humanity, I believe I would have found my way to other creatives and worked on my own characters. I would have proceeded with a calling to remind us humans that we aren’t meant to be destructive—we’re meant to be creative. Human creativity will always create a way to prove that to us. It’s not that we didn’t need Sesame Street or the Muppets. But it came from people who were personally mission-driven long before Sesame Street or the Muppets ever came into being.

Joan Ganz-Cooney saw how preschool children were learning and memorizing TV commercials. Some were for products like cigarettes. Instead of taking a stand against those commercials, she saw the potential in using that same format to teach underserved children letters and numbers. That was much more than the show itself. It was her heart for the welfare of children. When that vision needed an added boost to bring it to those children in need, Jim Henson was brought in. It was his heart for characters and making people laugh and feel great that made his contribution so extraordinary. He never even saw a puppet show as a child. I believe one of his most famous quotes proves it was more about his heart than his characters:

“When I was young, my ambition was to be one of the people who made a difference in this world. My hope still is to leave the world a little bit better for my having been here. It’s a wonderful life and I love it.”

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Special thanks to Louis Henry Mitchell and his team at Blackstone Publishing for their time. Follow Mitchell on LinkedIn to stay in the loop with his latest projects. Qreative Evolution: How to Question Everything to Find Your Creative Fulfillment will be available in physical, digital and audio formats June 24, 2025 wherever books are sold. 

Tahlia Norrish is an Aussie-Brit actor, writer and current MPhil Candidate at the University of Queensland’s School of Sport Sciences. After graduating from both The Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (Distinction, Acting & Musical Theatre) and Rose Bruford College (First Class Hons, Acting), Tahlia founded The Actor’s Dojo — a coaching program pioneering peak performance and holistic well-being for actors.

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