When thinking about the world of design, it probably wouldn’t even occur to you to think about podcasts, yet there is a thriving world of design podcasts to be explored. Even though design largely a visual medium, not matter the type of design, the audial world is not without its benefits for designers who know how to use it right. In the past decade podcasts have become a massive industry and a few design podcasts have found themselves at the top.

The first podcast I want to bring up is by far the largest podcast focused on design. Hosted by Roman Mars, 99% Invisible is a weekly podcast about various types of design, often investigating a different single topic each week. The podcast has covered everything from the design of maps, all the graphic design that goes into making a film, to the struggle of designing a machine to pick peppers. The podcast does an excellent job of showing just how universal design is and how much it can affect the world around us, not just in the modern world, but even hundreds of years in the past. Even if you have little interest in design, I’d still recommend the podcast if you have any interest in the world around you, as many of the subjects discussed are things you’d never know about otherwise.

The second podcast I want to bring up is The Deeply Graphic DesignCast. This podcast focuses on being a professional designer and helping you out with things that designers have to deal with on a regular basis. The podcast covers topics from crafting a design proposal, how to use social media as a designer to your benefit, and how to balance life and work for a design professional. The Deeply Graphic DesignCast is hosted by three designers, who all have experience in the field, Nick Longo, Mikelle Morrison, and Jordan Wilson. This one is much more focused on designers and their issues, so I wouldn’t recommend it for people outside of the field, but to those who work in design, it is an excellent resource.

The final podcast I’d like to put a spotlight on is perhaps the oldest design podcast: Design Matters. Design Matters, hosted by Debbie Millman, is much more about the designers themselves, rather than the industry as a whole. Each episode Debbie sits down with a different designer, from various different types of design, from comic artists, to web designers, to graphic design. It’s a great podcast to not only become familiar with well known designers, but see the intersections of the business, the industry, and the individual. This again is a podcast again, is not one I would recommend to people outside of the world of design, but it is a very nice way to get to know certain designer whether you’re familiar with them or not.

All of these podcasts, though greatly different in their content, show how successful a podcast about design can be even though it’s an auditory podcast about a visual profession. While the two seem opposed, once you see how they can work together, you can find some extremely high quality content and I do recommend every designer to give one a try sometime, you will be introduced to so many new ideas that might just kickstart your creativity.