Intro to Podcast Design

Know your space

Take the time to investigate the competitors in your podcast’s future category.

Your space is where your idea meets the competition. Every podcast lives in a category with thousands of others. These categories act like digital neighborhoods, organizing shows into searchable buckets. To make your mark, you need to understand your space: the digital real estate your topic occupies.

Start by asking: Who’s already talking about this?

It’s less about who they are and more about what they’re covering.

What angles are they exploring?

What are they skipping over?

Knowing this can reveal opportunities by revealing stories no one else is telling. Even the best podcasts can’t cover everything.

And don’t just look at what’s working but also pay attention to what’s not. Every category has thousands of zombie podcasts that haven’t released an episode in years. I call them Podwrecks, derelict podcasts that still haunt the top of many categories. These undead shows might have had their moment, but they’re coasting on seniority, not relevance.

You need to review them and learn from their mistakes. They are more than just outdated info, broken links, and stale content. They are a constant reminder of what happens when you don’t love your idea.

Meanwhile, your fresh, adaptive show can rise past them by doing what they can’t: grow, evolve, and stay current.

Competition isn’t always about beating others. It’s often about standing out. Take a page from Podcasters’ Roundtable, where three so-called competitors joined forces to create something entirely new. Instead of fighting over the same audience, they collaborated, showing that your space can be a source of inspiration, not rivalry.

But don’t focus only on the outdated or low-ranking shows. Pay attention to how these shows present the only visual component of podcasting: their podcast brand.

When potential listeners scroll through your category, they’re bombarded with hundreds of titles and thumbnails. Most blend into a forgettable sea of sameness: generic titles, overused buzzwords, and copycat designs.

Don’t be one of them.

Analyze the podcast branding in your space and take note of the good, the bad, and the ugly:

How many include overused words like on fire or hustle?

How many use nearly identical imagery or no imagery at all?

How many of these images are just a headshot of the podcast host jammed into that tiny square box?

How use unreadable paragraphs of text?

How many use bad fonts or worse colors?

The short answer is too many! If you’re noticing a pattern, so will your audience. Bad design always makes people tune it out. The shows that stand out usually have something different, something evocative, and make people curious.

This means if you want to stand out, you have to be bold!

Forget cramming keywords into your title just to show up in search results. Instead, aim for something memorable. A name that pops and an image that grabs attention. These are the things that stop a scroll.

My point is that your podcast’s brand isn’t just an afterthought. It’s a handshake and the only chance you will get to make a visual first impression long before they press play.

Don’t punt on this. Make it count! Because when it comes to your podcast, it will always be seen and read before it is ever heard.

The endless sea of crap podcast names and show art proves that few take the time to investigate their space. Don’t make that mistake. Investigating your space is an advantage you cannot ignore.

Know your space.

Learn what everyone is doing.

Then exploit that knowledge by doing something different.