Design Better Partnerships

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Design Better Partnerships

Design Better co-hosts Eli Woolery and Aarron Walter explore the intersection of design, technology, and the creative process through conversations with inspiring guests across many creative fields. Design professionals and the design curious alike come to Design Better for inspiration and education about creativity and collaboration. Episodes are released semi-weekly.

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DesignBetter+ gives listeners and teams an elevated learning experience.⁠

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Awards and recognition

Design Better has more than 160,000 monthly listeners, 76,000 Spotify followers, has been downloaded and streamed more than 4 million times, and has been recognized by the Webbys, W3 Awards, Vanity Fair, Architectural Digest, and others.

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What listeners are saying

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Select guests

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David Sedaris⁠

, humorist and author, on observation and prototyping

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OK Go⁠

, Grammy winning band, on making the impossible possible

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Tony Fadell ⁠

, co-inventor of the iPhone and iPod, on how to build the future

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Eileen Fisher⁠

, fashion founder, on simplicity and design principles

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John Cleese⁠

, Monty Python co-founder, on the creative process

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Ed Catmull⁠

, cofounder of Pixar, lessons on creativity from Pixar and Lucas Films

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Paula Antonelli⁠

, Museum of Modern Art design and architecture senior curator, on how design shapes culture

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Dr. Sian Proctor⁠

, SpaceX astronaut, on building common languages in teams

About our audience

Design Better listeners are career-focused design and technology experts at major companies like Apple, Airbnb, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Disney, and Nike. Students just learning about design and technology and those transitioning into creative fields also tune in.

Many in our audience are focused on personal and career growth. They’re self-starters who have achieved success in their career or taking the initiative to achieve their goals. They are high earners and well educated.

Income

More than 44% of our audience makes $100,000/year or more.

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Source: Chartable

Education

More than half our audience has a college degree.

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Source: Chartable

Gender

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Source: Spotify

Age

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Source: Spotify

Audience interests outside of work

Common roles of Design Better listeners:

Designer (Manager/Director)

Designer (Individual Contributor)

Product manager

Marketing manager

Researcher

Executive

Consultant

Student

Source: 2023 survey

Ways we help brands

Design Better partners with trusted brands to create compelling advertorial content that both informs and engages our audience. Whether you’re looking to build brand equity, attract talent, or drive sales, the Design Better team can craft a bespoke content to help you achieve your goals.

To start a conversation, get in touch at

contact@thecuriositydepartment.com⁠

Select sponsors we’ve partnered with

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Advertorial storytelling

American Giant

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We partnered with American Giant, makers of premium, made-in-America clothing, to help them tell their story and share their values with the Design Better audience. We produced a 1 hour interview with founder Bayard Winthrop that was released as a bonus episode of Design Better. Through this episode, Bayard was able to tell the origin story of the company, the values of the brand, and authentically talk about their products in a way that proved compelling to our audience.

Bonus episode sponsorship

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Our audience loved the episode and shared their positive feedback on social channels.

To cut to the chase… At the end of your episode with Bayard Winthrop you explained the importance of producing relevant content even if it’s an “adjacency”. All of your explanation made sense to me, but from the get-go the episode made 100% sense to me - because 100% of the integrity, and curiosity, and ingenuity that I bring to my digital/virtual work as a designer, was baked in an analog manufactured world. If I grew up with primarily digital and code-based inspirations for design, I probably would not be a designer today. So thank you for making time to offer an episode that honored those manufactured/tactile roots in my love of design. -Carlo Blackmore

Really loved the episode with Bayard Winthrop. I had been struggling with a really tough decision and listening to this podcast gave me the conviction that I was doing the right thing. If you are able to pass along the impact this had for me I would appreciate it. -Stephen Schroth

After the episode aired, we produced a series of mid-roll ads that ran across the entire catalog to remind listeners of the brand, and encourage activation with a discount code.

Goals: Drive brand awareness, build trust, drive sales

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Heath Ceramics

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Heath Ceramics has a rich history in shaping mid century modern design. We partnered with them to produce a series of advertorial pieces for our design history series. The careful connection between our content programming and their brand story resulted in compelling storytelling across channels including our podcast, social channels, and email.

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We visited Heath Ceramics San Francisco studio for a photoshoot. These photo assets brought each multi-channel story to life. We packaged up the photo and audio assets for Heath who used them across their social channels as well.

Goals: Drive brand awareness and sales

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Automattic

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Automattic, makers of Wordpress, wanted to attract top talent to their teams, so we partnered with them on a new segment of Design Better called “Office Hours”, which featured conversations with some of the top leaders of the company who shared the unique problems they’re solving, company culture, mission, and values in their own voice.

Format: 3-4 minute interviews positioned as a segment of the show, not an ad block, with a 15-second pre-roll announcing the coming interview later in the episode.

Interviews: 4 interviews with inspiring people from your organization, one interview included in 4 episodes of the podcast. Sample Office Hours segment:

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Automattic Office Hours-Josepha-Haden-Chomphosy.mp3

6.3 MB

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Live Episodes

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Authentic, host-composed and recorded ads

We’ve also helped brands like Brain.fm, Methodical Coffee, Wert&Co, Fable, UplistDesk, Factor, and others speak to our audience of thousands of designers and technologists. We only partner with brands we know will provide meaningful value to our audience so we can deliver honest endorsements that will in turn provide value for our partners.

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All of our partners are featured on our website⁠

Ad examples

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Methodical Coffee Mid Roll Final.mp3

1.3 MB

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wertco-ad2-enhanced-95p.mp3

1.1 MB

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factor2-enhanced-90p.mp3

1 MB

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brainfm-midroll.mp3

1.4 MB

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All of our pre-, mid-, and post-roll ads are handled through True Native Media. Get in touch for pricing and availability:

campaigns@truenativemedia.com⁠

Email newsletter

We publish a monthly newsletter to our list of 70,000 highly engaged subscribers with a 41% average open rate. This provides an additional channel to reach our audience with strong CTAs and links that drive traffic and sales.

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We published a holiday gift guide⁠

that promoted our sponsors’ products along side some of our favorite products. It received 41,300 views.

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Co-branded products

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We partnered with Methodical coffee to create a co-branded Design Better coffee⁠

, that has proved to be a popular addition to their line.

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Pricing

Advertorial content

Please get in touch to discuss.

contact@thecuriositydepartment.com⁠

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Host-produced and voiced ads

$35 CPM, managed by True Native Media:

campaigns@truenativemedia.com⁠

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Meet the hosts

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About Aarron Walter

Aarron Walter is a design and technology leader. He started the user experience design practice at

Mailchimp⁠

and helped grow the company from a few thousand customers to tens of millions. Later at InVision, he studied the design teams at some of the most admired tech companies to identify the traits that influence success. When the COVID19 pandemic emerged, he joined former CDC Director Dr Tom Frieden at

Resolve to Save Lives⁠

to help US public health teams, the Africa CDC, and the WHO use design and technology in emergency response.

He's the author of a number of books, the latest of which is the second edition of

Designing for Emotion⁠

. Aarron's design guidance has helped the White House, the US Department of State, and dozens of major corporations, startups, and venture capital firms.

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Twitter⁠

LinkedIn⁠

Website⁠

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About Eli Woolery

Elijah trained in the Product Design program at Stanford University, where he now teaches as a lecturer. He has a background in photography and filmmaking, as well as product and industrial design. He is formerly the Director of Design Education at InVision, a software design and collaboration platform. After working as a lead design engineer with Light & Motion, a vertically integrated manufacturer of consumer underwater video and photography equipment, he pursued graduate studies in marine biology at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, and co-founded the print magazine Wetpixel Quarterly in 2007. He was a founder in the second class of Innovation Endeavor's Runway Program, a venture-backed startup accelerator backed by Eric Schmidt's fund. He also founded Out of the Deep Blue, a design consultancy, where he worked on web and mobile applications for clients like Genentech and Kaiser Permanente. As a life-long worshiper of the ocean, he loves to surf, dive, and kayak.

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