Podcasts are the creative person’s best friend. Whether you’re playing them in the background while you’re making art or using them as art procrastination, you might as well listen to podcasts that inspire you to be creative.
Here are 15 podcasts featuring experts offering their wisdom about design, professional geekery, art, and how to get over those creative blocks (#CreativePeopleProblems, amiright?).
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Creative Inspiration
Creative Pep Talk: This podcast is equal parts self-help for creatives and a fantastic podcast to listen to when you’ve hit a creative block. Andy J. Miller’s Creative Pep Talk has interviews and super inspiring, well, pep-talks, about creativity, not letting artists’ anxiety get in the way of your success, and much more. If you’re lacking inspiration or have hit a creative block? Listen to Creative Pep Talk to kick yourself back into shape!
Pencil vs Pixel: Sometimes finding inspiration just means listening to other creatives talk about their process, their successes, their struggles, and their craft. Pencil vs Pixel celebrates designers and gives them a place to share their process and story. It’s not only a great way to find out about new designers – it’s also a fantastic way of getting inspired.
Adventures in Design: Mark Brickey interviews mainly artists, illustrators, and toy designers (to name a few trades) as they discuss everything from their own art to how to organize and set up an art gallery show. One cool thing about this podcast is that it doesn’t just talk to creatives about their process. Brickey interviews creatives who also provide insight about opening galleries, hosting or getting involved in gallery shows, starting their own design empires, starting festivals, etc.
The Great Discontent: It’s easy to just talk about the joy and love of design and being a passionate creator. But as any creative knows, this road is sometimes dark and full of struggles (points to Game of Thrones people who got that reference). It’s not always easy-going and this is a refreshingly honest podcast to listen to about those trials and tribulations and, most importantly, how to learn from and overcome them. There are only a few episodes because the show is brand-spankin’ new, but they’re rad.
The Busy Creator: You don’t have to know anything about woodworking, the advertising world, or animation to learn something from the experts who do. The Busy Creator shows that no matter what creative industry you’re in, there is always something you can take away from other creative industries. From talking about using psychology in design to how to set up a creative office space, The Busy Creator is refreshingly diverse in its subject material while bringing it all under one umbrella.
The Treatment: If you want to hear A-listers talk about their creative process, here’s where you can hear all about it. The Treatment has episodes featuring Leonardo DiCaprio, Don Cheadle, Tyler, The Creator, and a ton more. And they’re super binge-able too, usually not going much past 29 minutes long.
Song Exploder: One for the musicians out there! Song Exploder may be centered on interviewing bands and musicians about their craft, but you don’t have to be a musician to get a lot out of it. The podcast has musicians pick apart their own creations to examine what inspired their songs and what the process was in creating their music. If you like good music, are looking for new music, or just want to get creatively inspired by musical people, Song Exploder is an awesome podcast to listen to.
Professional Geeks
Professional Geek Podcast: Being a creative professional is all about turning something you love into a career. From sci-fi magazine editors to video game designers, Professional Geek Podcast‘s hosts Blaire Knight-Graves and Mark Beers talk to people who have managed to turn the geeky things they love into careers. Even the podcast itself came from geeky origins, starting as a comic convention panel that has toured the circuit from C2E2 to Indy Pop Con.
Nerdette: Like the female version of the Nerdist podcast meets This American Life. Nerdette strikes a healthy balance between talking to professionals in the geeky field like Felicia Day and Dan Savage, but also features interviews with creative professionals who are pop-culture staples – like cast members from Hamilton and Stephen King – and topics that range anywhere from sex to rock n roll to science and society.
Design
Process: Process is a podcast all about design from designers, and is hosted by one of our very own here at Threadless, Billy Carlson! With just one episode out so far, Process is brand-spankin’ new, their inaugural episode telling the story behind Chicago’s youngest transportation service, the “Divvy” bike, its branding, and how it came to be.
Design Details: Featuring interviews with designers and developers at big name companies like Facebook, GoPro, and DropBox (to name a few), Design Details is like the Silicon Valley of podcasts.
Design Matters: The “first and longest running podcast about design,” Debbie Millman’s Design Matters podcast interviews professionals from every corner of the creative design world to examine creative culture from every angle possible.
Web Ahead: As the title suggests, Web Ahead is all about the intersection between the web and the world of design in the present, and looks at what the web and its user experience will be down the line in the future.
Featured image is “Music Time” by Graja
