40 Best Creative Podcasts To Liven Up Your Day in 2021
You can’t beat a good podcast. Whether commuting or cooking, in the gym or tucked up in bed, podcasts are a great way of keeping up to date with what’s going on in the world. And this is no different for design and creative podcasts—no matter your mood, whether you want to learn or laugh, then there’s something out there. They’re the ideal way to get inspired or find the perfect slice of advice.
The only negative is that sometimes it’s hard to find to pick one to listen to. Don’t worry, that’s where we at Shillington come in—we’ve put together a list of our favourite 40 design and creative podcasts for you to pop on in your headphones whenever the time comes.
1. Pathfinder
Shillington’s very own podcast Pathfinder exists to support Shillumni and other graphic design graduates across the world entering the creative industry. Hosted by Shillington New York Teacher Jimmy Muldoon, the podcast features design heavyweights, industry leaders and some of our graduates talking about their design journeys and advice on how to navigate the highs and lows of the journey from graduate to working designer.
2. Creative Rebels
Hosted by David Speed and Adam Brazier, the co-founders of Graffiti Life and Parlour Tattoo, Creative Rebels features inspiring interviews with people who’ve rebelled against the nine-to-five and offers advice on how you can follow in their footsteps.
3. Never Not Creative
Never Not Creative is a community of creatives who want to make the industry a better place. Its lively creative podcasts feature interviews with community members, as well as discussing issues and making announcements.
4. Design Your Life
In his 2015 book, Design Your Life, Vince Frost laid out his central idea that design thinking can apply to everything from business to life. His accompanying podcast expands on this theory and explores how successful people have changed their lives for the better.
5. Bounce The Block
Creative block is something that effects every creative, no matter their medium. In this handy podcast, photographer Emma Croman and her guests identify the causes behind creative blocks and how you can use those hurdles to your advantage in your creative practice. Every week, she invites a different amazing creative on to show to chat about what has blocked them in the past, and what they did about it. Eye-opening stuff.
6. Design Matters
In 2005, Debbie Millman started a radio show, Design Matters, which became the first-ever of the design and creative podcasts. The show’s still going strong today, and features interviews with some of the world’s best-known designers, artists and cultural leaders.
7. The Creative Boom Podcast
The Creative Boom Podcast has just wrapped its second season, sponsored by Shillington! The podcast features fun and frank conversations with some of the world’s leading creatives, including the likes of Ian Anderson, Malcolm Garrett, Shanti Sparrow, Morag Myerscough and Dapo Adeola. Host Katy Cowan chats to her guests about creativity, life and lots more—often eliciting some surprising and revealing revelations from them.
8. Perspective Podcast
If you’re a designer or artist seeking discussions on hard topics like mental health, growing an audience, pricing your services, and attracting work, then this podcast is for you. Each week, Scotty Russell of Perspective-Collective and his guests give you the tools for thinking bigger, overcoming adversity, and making an impact with your work.
9. Being Freelance
Since 2015, Steve Folland has spoken to more than 100 freelancers for this series of creative podcasts, about the trials of being freelance. Through hearing their stories, he aims to help his listeners become better freelancers, as well as himself.
10. Creative Pep Talk
The host of Creative Pep Talk Andy J. Miller is passionate about helping creative entrepreneurs strike the perfect balance between art and business. Through bizarre analogies, personal stories and artist interviews, he hopes to help you break free from confusion and guide you towards career success.
11. HUSH+1
Born out of experience design agency HUSH’s internal speaker series, this podcast asks leaders from all creative walks of life – including design, art, technology, architecture, fashion, engineering, fabrication, psychology, music and urban planning – to explain what they do and why they do it.
12. The Creative Condition Podcast
Hosted by illustrator and writer Ben Tallon, The Creative Condition Podcast is all about honesty. Tallon invites guests to open up and share their own personal story of creativity and everything that comes with it—whether positive or negative! Tallon’s aim is to keep building up an archive of useful stories and experiences and the tips that come from to help his listeners maximise their creativity.
13. Australian Design Radio
Australian Design Radio is a podcast based in Sydney that aims to provide the global creative community with conversations and commentary on Australian design. In each episode, presenters Flyn Tracy and Matt Leach invite an industry guest to tell their story, discuss their work, and debate current creative issues.
14. Humans Aren’t Robots
This podcast from Adelaide web design agency Digital Noir takes a deep dive into the world of digital design industry and helps you get to know the real people behind it. The focus here is on freeform conversations with marketing professionals and business owners making an impact in the world.
15. Creative Ways
As a creative, you’re well aware of that grasp that a creative feeling can have on you. This is exactly what Emma Isaacs explores in her podcast Creative Ways. She chats with successful creatives who have let their creative grasp hold them—and led them to a fulfilling life and career and getting paid doing what they love every day.
16. 99% Invisible
A podcast we are sure needs no introduction, 99% Invisible explores the unnoticed and unthought-of—the design and architecture that we don’t see but plays an important role in how we live our lives. With 450+ episodes under his belt, host Roman Mars has focused on the relationships between swimming pools and skateboarding, flatpack houses, raccoons in Toronto and lots, lots more.
17. Wireframe
One for the digital design fans! Wireframe takes a deep dive into UX design and how it helps technology become useable and an essential part of lives. From Adobe and hosted by their Senior Director of Product Design, Khoi Vinh, Wireframe really breaks the world of UX so is not only great for digital design fanatics, but any graphic designer or the design curious too.
18. The Reflex Blue Show
A podcast about graphic design, pop culture, web design, and the people working in the industry, The Reflex Blue Show is hosted by Donovan Beery, a designer living and working in Omaha, Nebraska.
19. Do By Friday
Fast-paced, quick-witted and frequently weird, Do By Friday is a weekly challenge show covering politics, media, tech and other subjects. Hosted by three internet personalities, Merlin Mann, Alex Cox, and Max Temkin, it’s a whole heap of fun.
20. Design Beat
A podcast from surface pattern designer Lauren Kunz and graphic designer Steph Hammer, Design Beat covers stories and advice from the ladies that we all love from the design industry. Covering a range of topics from honouring the weird within you to trusting yourself to be yourself and how to avoid burnout, Design Beat is the best thing to have in your headphones when you’re looking for a little encouragement.
21. North v South
North v South is a podcast hosted by two English graphic designers, one from ‘up North’, the other one from ‘down South’. They talk about design, illustration, technology, books and pies, and sometimes they have guests too.
22. Adventures in Design
This daily talk show for creatives explores how to design happiness into your professional life. Presenter Mark Brickey and his guests aim to keep you entertained, educated and inspired while you create a better-designed world for yourself.
23. Do Good Podcast
Hosted by Rob Watson, The Do Good Podcast shares people’s inspiring and uplifting stories from around the world. In between most interviews, Rob shares his thoughts on the things that inspire him to become a better version of himself. A warm blast of feelgood audio.
24. Hurry Slowly
The design equivalent of the Slow Food movement, this podcast focuses on how you can become more productive, creative and resilient through the simple act of slowing down. It’s presented by Jocelyn K. Glei.
25. Design Life
Design Life is a podcast about design and side projects for motivated creators. It was born when two serial side project addicts, Charli Prangley and Femke van Schoonhoven, saw a gap in the podcast market for a conversational show about design and the issues young creatives face.
26. Disneyland for Designers
Something a little different—Disneyland for Designers does exactly what it says on the tin: explores Disneyland from the perspective of creatives. Host Jerrod Maruyama has explored many different aspects of the park—from Cinderella’s Castle to the new Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge world. Even if Disney isn’t your thing, design is and there’s a lot of designing that goes into Disneyland so DfD is definitely worth a listen.
27. The Futur
Out of Santa Monica, California, The Futur aims to empower creative entrepreneurs to live a sustainable life, doing what they love. Hosted by Chris Do, host of YouTube channel The Process, topics covered include branding, design, business and UX design.
28. Monocle on Design
Monocle on Design doesn’t miss a beat—it keeps it finger on the pulse of the design world to bring listeners the latest in design—from fashion and furniture to graphic design and architecture. The hosts share all the new stories and designers they’ve found, as well as keeping update to date with all the news from the world’s most exciting studios.
29. Design Better
The Design Better podcast delivers insights from some of the best-known design leaders. Interviewers are conducted by Aarron Walter and Eli Woolery, to empower teams to transform their practice and build remarkable products.
30. Overtime
Twice a month, Dribbble‘s official podcast shares in-depth interviews with renowned designers. Dan Cederholm, designer and co-founder of Dribbble, chats to them about their process, the tools they use, and the stories behind their most popular shots.
31. The DGDC
Hosted by working designers Wes McDowell, Mikelle Morrison and Nick Longo, each episode of The DGDC (Deeply Graphic Designcast) podcast tackles a different graphic design topic, from finding better clients to online portfolios to making sure you get paid.
32. User Defenders
Want to become a better UX designer? Want to become the best, most powerful UX designer you can be? Then look no further than User Defenders, a podcast that focuses on how UX can be used to make the world a better place for users and businesses—and teaches you that being a great UX designer begins and ends with being a great human.
33. D&D In Audio
This interview series on industry leaders and young creatives comes from D&AD and WPP. Each episode discusses a different topic related to creativity, such as storytelling, authenticity or dealing with tight deadlines.
34. UI Breakfast
UI Breakfast takes a close look at the world of UI and UX design, products, marketing and more with some of the most knowledgable, fascinating people from the industry. As well as chatting about their guest’s careers, they also discuss data and design so that listeners can use their knowledge to inspire and inform their own work and business.
35. Stack Magazines
Stack is a company that delivers a different independent magazine to your door every month. Its fine podcast features conversations with independent publishers, who tell behind the scenes stories of how well-known magazines operate.
36. Clever
In this weekly podcast, Amy Devers and Jaime Derringer of the Design Milk blogs pursue candid and revealing conversations with some super-smart designers, including graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister, interior designer Elena Frampton and industrial designer Catherine Bailey.
37. The Honest Designers Show
In these career-focused creative podcasts Tom Ross, Ian Barnard, Dustin Lee and Lisa Glanz give you a completely honest look at what it takes to flourish as a professional creative. You’ll discover actionable tips to land more clients, find your style, successfully brand yourself, and ultimately find satisfaction in your work.
38. Meet the Creatives
Rob Johnston is an independent graphic designer and photographer based in New York. His podcast aims to bridge the gap between entry-level creatives and top talent from companies like Facebook, Google, Adobe, Nike, Airbnb, Twitter, Huge and Pentagram.
39. Type Radio
Are you obsessed with typography? Then you’ll want to make a beeline for this podcast, which features interviews with prominent type designers and type specialists including Erik Brandt, Roel Wouters and Michiel Schuurman.
40. On Design
On Design is a brilliant podcast hosted by Justyna Green that brings you insightful conversations with art and design’s most inspiring figures—from designers to musicians, dancers to architects and everybody in-between. If you want to know what inspires them, how they work and how they see the world, this is one to subscribe to.
Artwork by #ShilloNYC Teacher Emily Comfort
If all these enlightening creative podcasts have left you inspired to change careers then maybe Shillington is the place for you! Head to our website to find out more about our Course and Approach, Graduate Testimonials and the next Info Session dates.
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