A round-up of great vlogs and podcasts for designers

Being a designer is not your average job: your work is constantly evolving, giving you new tools to either become more productive or to simply create better work. For that, we all do our best to read books, brush up our skills following some tutorials, subscribe to blogs or attend design conferences. However, we often overlook one medium: the podcast.

If you are a seasoned multitasker, you can listen to podcasts while working. Otherwise, the other big advantage of podcasts is that you can take it anywhere and listen to it whenever you want, while riding the bus to work or doing the dishes.

To find the perfect podcast is hard, but there are many good shows out there, especially for designers. Good podcasts usually have the following: a great host that chooses good topics and quality guests, good sound quality and jingles, show notes and links.

The following shows usually combine all those properties, check them out!

Web design news

Web workers rejoice, there are tons of podcasts for you to get better at what you do. Here are my favorites.

The Big Web Show

Website – Feed – on iTunes

Two experienced designers, Dan Benjamin and Jeffrey Zeldman, talking about various topics of interest like web publishing, art direction, web technology, typography, and much more. It is the perfect podcast to learn about what’s going on on the web with two relaxed hosts and frequent special guests. It is a very professional podcast that is aired every week.

The Sitepoint podcast

Website – Feed – on iTunes

The popular web designers and developers hub also runs a podcast on its blog. There are multiple authors and a wide range of topics are talked about, like CSS, iPhone development, freelancing, jQuery, and ASP. Regular guests also make it more interesting. The show is aired about twice a week.

Think Vitamin radio

Website – Feed – on iTunes

Every two weeks, the Carsonified team speaks about web design, business, and development. They have an interesting section called “Tweet of the week” and some frequent guests. This podcast is generally more business oriented than other web design podcasts.

WebDev radio

Website – on iTunes

For the more tech-oriented minds, WebDev radio is a podcast about web development, programming languages for the web, and the life of web workers. Front-end designers may not be so interested by this podcast, but web developers should be glad to listen to shows about Tomcat, Java, Ruby on Rails, and more. Unfortunately, the show is not aired very often, about every two months.

Build & Analyze

Website – Feed – on iTunes

Marco Arment, the founder of Instapaper, talks with Dan Benjamin about an interesting for today’s web designers: the mobile web. The main topics are, among others: iPhone, iPad, iOS, and mobile web development. Every week, Marco and Dan give some expert insights on these topics.

Graphic design podcasts

Keeping up to date is not easy for graphic designers, but these podcasts should to the trick.

Design Matters

Website

Hosted by Debbie Millman, who is not only president of the design division at Sterling Brands, but also president of the AIGA and editor at Print Magazine. In this show, she profiles inspiring, influencial and famous designers. The topics covered are often tied to global news, with a more cultural take on art, design or cultural events. The show is normally aired almost every week, but publications have been a bit sporadic in the past few months.

InDesign Secrets podcast

Website – on iTunes

The best podcast for the afficionados of the popular layout tool. Get tips and tricks, learn new shortcuts and obscure InDesign features, and hear interviews with designers. You’ll be amazed by how many functionalities there are in InDesign, and how much you still have to learn, with this weekly podcast.

Pixel Perfect

Website – Feed

Digital artist Bert Monroy teaches you tips and tricks to master Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. It’s quite art-oriented, so digital painters out there should be interested by learning new techniques from this show. Every episode is short and straight to the point. This show is published every week.

Photoshop User TV

Website – Feed – on iTunes

A weekly show featuring Scott Kelby, Dave Cross, and Matt Kloskowski and presented by the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. Get all the tips, tricks and tutorials you need. It is probably the most famous and authoritative show about the image editing software. If you want to know everything about Photoshop you should definitly watch this show.

Typeradio

Website – Feed

For the type lovers out there, the fine hosts of the show visit different design events around the world to talk with designers. This show is often very short, but always long enough to know what’s going on in the type world. It is not published very regularly, so the best way to keep up to date is to subscribe to it.

Freelancing podcasts

Freelancing can be overwhelming, especially when you are getting started. So why don’t you learn quicker by listening to related podcasts?

Freelance Advisor

Website – Feed

A lot of advice by expert freelancers, with interviews with successful freelancers. Topics covered are numerous and give you tips on everything you could dream of. They have recently given tips about how to take advantage of online marketplaces or about taxes for freelancers, for example. The show is published every two months.

Back to Work

Website – Feed – on iTunes

Dan Benjamin and Merlin Mann, the creator of 43Folders and InboxZero, discuss productivity, work, communication, constraints, tools, and more. If you don’t know who Merlin Mann is, let’s just say that he is a real authority when it comes to productivity for web workers. The show airs every week.

Rookie Designer

Website – Feed – on iTunes

Rookie designer is an excellent podcast for all starting designers out there, but also for others. Talking about the issues a young designer will face and helping you to become a freelancer. There are plenty of topics covered, like working with clients in another country, content strategies or negotiating your dream job. You can listen to all this almost every two weeks.

Six Pixels of Separation

Website – Feed – on iTunes

A general podcast targeted to web workers and designers. Mitch Joel talks about a lot of things of interest for freelancers, marketers, bloggers, and creative people in general. It’s a great show to get insights from a top marketer every week.

Do you listen to design podcasts? Which important design podcast did we miss in this article?

Mirko Humbert

Written and compiled exclusively for Webdesigner Depot by Mirko Humbert. Mirko is a graphic and web designer and blogger from Switzerland. When he is not working for his clients, he blogs on Designer Daily and Typography Daily or installs WordPress for free.