The best design podcasts of 2025
When it comes to podcasts, there’s a lot to sift through. Spotify, alone, in fact has more than 6.5 million on its platform, hundreds of which are devoted to topics like design, architecture, and more. If that feels overwhelming, not to worry: we’ve got more than a few favourite design podcasts in our queues. And, with Salone del Mobile just around the corner, there’s no better time to pull up a chair and grab your headphones. Much like Wallpaper,* our favourite shows are both light and cerebral and offer everything from engaging interviews with the world’s leading creative minds to in-depth explorations of industry topics and trends. Can’t wait to get listening? Here are the 20 best design podcasts we can’t get out of our heads—or our ears.
Perhaps design isn’t your thing? Take a look at our podcast picks for art addicts and fashion buffs.
LISTEN TO THESE 20 GREAT DESIGN PODCASTS TO TUNE IN AND ZONE OUT
Creative Capes Podcast
Creative Capes, a production spearheaded by Future London Academy, encourages colloquial conversations between design innovators from around the world. Through these relaxed interviews, participants share their personal insights on leadership, branding, and innovation, while also sharing anecdotes and mistakes they have made along the way. From Zaha Hadid Architects on Bauhaus, design leadership and why creatives should question everything, to Steve ‘Buzz’ Pearce on the power of design in business, listen and digest on what’s going on in the industry.
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Writer: Tianna Williams
99% Invisible
A podcast which started in Roman Mars’ bedroom has expanded into a popular audio show with listeners across the world. The concept is to draw attention to the unnoticed architecture and design and explore the thought that goes into it. The podcast recently has a new series titled ‘ Not Built For This’ which explores how climate change is impacting the built environment in North America, from Florida to Arizona, California to Vermont, and how communities are responding.
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Writer: Tianna Williams
Design Matters
Es Devlin to Ai Weiwei, Mickalene Thomas to Marina Abramović, Design Matters is one of the first and longest podcasts having launched in 2005. What started as conversations via two landline phones has evolved into a show which brings together pioneering leaders withing the creative industry and more- from scienteits, philosophers, artists, and writers. Here, host designer and artist herself, Debbie Millman dives into each guests origin and the challenges they’ve encountered along the way.
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Writer: Tianna Williams
The Bowery Boys History podcast
This podcast is quite a fun one for those living in New York, or with an infatuation with the city that never sleeps. The Bowery Boys aka Greg Young and Tom Meyers unpack the history of the state, in 25 minute nuggets. Usually each episode is focused on a place, building or person, and with buckets of curiosity they unpack the foundations of the state and city.
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Writer: Tianna Williams
Gae Aulenti’s Legacy by Triennale Milano
Diving into the life of pioneering designer Gae Aulenti, Triennale Milano have released the new podcast ‘Gae Aulenti’s Legacy’. Hosted by writer and design critic Alice Rawsthorn, the first episode of the five-part series offers insight into Aulenti’s work through the perspective of those who knew her, from friends, to curators, and architects, including Paola Antonelli, Stefano Boeri, Ludovico Einaudi, Antonia Jannone, and Farshid Moussavi. The podcast runs in parallel with the retrospective, ‘Gae Aulenti (1927-2012)’ curated by Giovanni Agosti, at Milan’s Triennale Design Museum which is dedicated to the designer’s illustrious career. Each episode is released every two weeks.
Writer: Tianna Williams
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Arganto, Gabriele Devecchi Between Art & Design
The ‘Araganto’ podcast takes listeners on a journey through the life of pioneering artist and silversmith Gabriele Devecchi (Milan, 1938–2011). Diving into the theory and history of Italian design, and its symbiotic relationship with contemporary art, the six part series recounts the designer’s life’s work through memories, testimonies and reflections from friends to colleagues, critics to family members. Narrated in English by David Plaisant, the podcast also include the voices of Devecchi’s children Alice, Giacomo and Matteo, further adding a personal touch.
Writer: Tianna Williams
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The Chromologist by Farrow and Ball
Farrow and Ball have plunged into the podcasting world with a new series that celebrates creativity and colour. The series titled ‘The Chromologist’ invites inspiring guests within the art and design world including Tan France, and fashion designer Christopher John Rogers, to share four colours which represent a defining period in their lives, to anecdotes from childhood. Hosted by Farrow and Ball brand ambassador, Patrick O’Donnell, each guest embraces how pattern and colour can play a part in people’s lives. After exploring these memories Farrow and Ball will recommend a colour for the guest’s next chapter in their lives, taking away a sample pot to try.
Writer: Tianna Williams
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‘Homing In’ by The Modern House
A second podcast recently launched by The Modern House, ‘Homing In’ is a series of conversations with creatives ranging from India Mahdavi to Ruth Rogers exploring the meaning of home. Modern House co-founder Matt Gibberd leads a conversation with his guest that in each episode includes a home from their past, their current living space, and where they would like to end up in the future.
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Writer Rosa Bertoli
Sofa, Looking for Togo
‘Sofa, Looking for Togo’ is a new podcast series honouring the design, history and popularity of the iconic Togo sofa. Part of the celebrations for the 50th anniversary of the sofa’s creation, the podcast is hosted by French journalist Aurélie Sfez and produced by Radio K7 Creative, with contributions from industry leaders from a variety of creative disciplines. The podcast, Sfez explains, ‘is an adventure and an investigation to try to understand this worldwide success a little better. How did this sofa become such an iconic, inescapable piece of design? Why does everyone want it? What’s its secret?’. Tune in to find out.
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Writer Rosa Bertoli
Design Emergency Podcast
Collaborative platform Design Emergency waS set up by MoMA design curator Paola Antonelli and design critics and Wallpaper* contributor Alice Rawsthorn, with the aim of exploring ‘design’s role in building a better future.’ What started as an informal Instagram live series during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 has blossomed into a project that constitutes an important voice on the design panorama and now includes a book and design podcasts. In its inaugural episode, Rawsthorn interviews architect David Adjaye who talks about ‘architecture’s potential to secure a sustainable future for Africa’, in the context of some of his landmark projects including the National Cathedral of Ghana and the Edo Museum of West African Art in Benin City.
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Writer Rosa Bertoli
Material Matters
The starting point for each of Grant Gibson’s conversations with designers, makers or entrepreneurs is a material. Gibson created a series of engaging and intensely addictive episodes focusing on everything from paper (with Wallpaper’s long-term collaborator James Cropper), recycled aluminium (with Emeco owner Gregg Buchbinder) and even bacteria (with Natsai Audrey Chieza) and dead animals (with artist Polly Morgan). Each hour-long interview delves into the subject’s personal history while offering an educated, informative and in-depth take on each material. The podcast has now evolved to become a design fair, which made its debut during London Design Festival 2022.
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Writer Rosa Bertoli
On Design
On Design is hosted by illustrator and media professional Justyna Green through a series of insightful conversations with leading figures of design, from entrepreneurs to curators and designers: ‘If you want to know what inspires them, how they work and how they see the world, this is the podcast for you.’ With early interviews featuring the likes of Michael Anastassiades and Formafantasma, the latest season features designers Bethan Laura Wood and Alex Proba, and artist Shantell Martin.
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Writer Rosa Bertoli
The Be-Spoke Podcast
Multimedia project Woven Voices launched the Be-Spoke Podcast, revealing ‘ the relationships behind the commissioning process through the stories of designers, makers, clients, curators and brokers.’ Woven Voices founder Adriana Paice Kent speaks to creatives including Shiro Muchiri of SoShiro and architects Katerina Dionysopoulou and Billy Mavropoulos of Bureau de Change, delving into the experience of commissioning and making.
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Writer Rosa Bertoli
The Creative Boom Podcast
A series of ‘candid conversations with artists and designers about their creative journeys so far’, the Creative Boom design podcast goes deep into the artistic world and lives of creatives such as Pentagram’s Marina Willer and artist Morag Myerscough. The series so far features over 70 episodes that cover creativity as well as the challenged faced by working in the industry, from equality to mental health.
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Writer Rosa Bertoli
It’s Nice That Podcast
Newly launched at the beginning of 2022, the It’s Nice That Podcast made its debut with three episodes looking at creativity through in-depth conversations with graphic designers including Christoph Niemann, Eric Hu and the New York Times Magazine creative director Gail Bichler. Hosted by editor-in-chief Matt Alagiah, this new fortnightly design podcast ‘seeks to scrub away the Instagram gloss and hear the honest truth from people who have built careers out of their creativity.’ As an added bonus, each episode ends with a ‘Nice Note’, a voice memo sent by global designers and artists, describing a favourite spot in their home city (with the inaugural episodes ‘visiting’ Mumbai, Montpellier and Sydney).
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Writer Rosa Bertoli
Talking Practice
What do designers do, why and how they do it is the focus of a series of design podcasts from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. ‘Talking Practice’ is hosted by Grace La, the school’s professor of architecture and chair of Practice Platform, and features ‘in-depth interviews with leading designers on the ways in which architects, landscape architects, designers, and planners articulate design imagination through practice’. Episodes include interviews with OMA partner Shohei Shigematsu and designers Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu.
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Writer Rosa Bertoli
Words on Wood
Described as ‘a deep dive into the built environment’, AHEC’s ‘Words on Wood’ podcast (now in its second season) is developed as a series of cross-disciplinary conversations with designers and material experts to explore our relationship with the forest. Hosted by editors Oli Stratford and India Block, each half-hour episode is alternated with a 15-minute ‘tree short’ focusing on a specific species. Guests so far have included designers Sam Hecht and Yves Behar talking about new wood technologies, and Stephen Burks talking with Zanat founder Orhan Niksic in conversation on their approach to traditional woodworking techniques.
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Writer Rosa Bertoli
The Couch – Conversations on Design by B&B Italia
B&B Italia enlisted journalist David Plaisant (who memorably interviewed architect Paolo Portoghesi for Wallpaper*) to curate its first podcast series, talking all things sofas and homes with leading design voices including Michael Anastassiades, Mario Bellini, Ivy Ross, and Philippe Starck. Topics of the 30-minute conversations include ideas on the home of the future, comfort and ergonomics and the impact of the sofa on popular culture, with focus episodes on B&B classics such as ‘Camaleonda’ and ‘Le Bambole’, two iconic Mario Bellini designs.
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Writer Rosa Bertoli
Brackish ( formerly Making Design Circular)
Through her work, journalist Katie Treggiden has specialised in craft and sustainability and she shares her expertise in the hour-long episodes of her design podcast, ‘Brackish’. In every episode, Treggiden talks to the thinkers, doers, and makers of the circular economy: ‘These are the people who are challenging the linear take, make, waste model of production and consumption, and working towards something better.’ Through this inspiring series, she talks about topics such as repair and waste with Celia Pym, Christopher Raeburn, Daniel Charny and many more.
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Writer Rosa Bertoli
Opinionated Podcast
This series of design podcasts features informal dialogues between Italian, Stockholm-based designer Luca Nichetto and his creative friends, including Daan Roosegaarde and Giorgia Lupi, who share their views on the world-changing power of design. Wallpaper*s standing global design director Hugo Macdonald is featured in the episode above, where he talks about his boutique and creative space, Bard, and elevating daily rituals through craft and design.
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Writer Rosa Bertoli
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