Project 03 / 10
Yarn | A Story Podcast
Yarn is a narrative documentary podcast I write and produce in Dublin. Twenty-nine episodes across six seasons, including a three-part history of disability, a two-part docu-drama about a Nazi spy interned in Ireland, a trip through the Chernobyl exclusion zone, a night shift with a New York police officer and a tour of a dictator’s abandoned palace.
I make the whole thing, so the design comes with it: the brand, the cover artwork, the social posts, the main site and two companion sites.
Irish Podcast Awards, Gold for Best Factual Podcast 2022. Signal Awards, Bronze for Best Indie Podcast 2025.
The wordmark is a single unbroken line that loops back on itself, drawn to read as a stitch rather than a letterform. A knitted halftone sits under most surfaces.
Courier Prime sets headings and labels, Inter carries body copy. The cover artwork uses a slab serif instead, which holds up better at the size podcast apps display it.
The wordmark embroiders itself in satin stitch, types out the tagline, then unpicks and runs again.
On the site it is drawn in SVG rather than played as a video, so it stays sharp at any size and costs a few kilobytes. With reduced motion enabled it paints the finished frame and stops.
yarnpodcast.com. The home page gives the embroidery, one line on what the show is, and the platform links.
Below that is the full catalogue. Episode pages lead with the cover and the player, then the description, then every platform the episode is on and a link to the transcript.
The same pages at 390px. The artwork stays the largest element on screen, the platform buttons wrap into two columns, and the episode list runs one card per row.
Cover art for every episode. Each one sets its own palette so the covers stay distinct from each other in a feed.
Podcast apps display these at roughly 60 pixels square, so the type is set large, the illustrations are flattened to simple shapes, and detail that would not survive the reduction is cut.
Social posts are built from the same artwork. This one ran as a poll for an episode about an island hotel off the west coast of Ireland.
Animated posts reuse the cover artwork. This one cycles the island from day to night.
Lefty is about a man whose left leg has a mind of its own. Funny, then not. I made a motion comic of it. Third Coast picked the episode up for Re:Sound.
Watch on YouTube
A companion site for one episode, at caravaggio.yarnpodcast.com. The story runs from Caravaggio killing a man in Rome in 1606 to the IRA shooting an RIC inspector outside Gorey in 1920, tied together by one painting.
The script is laid out as chapters with the photographs and paintings in place. A map docks to the right as you read and moves to whichever city the chapter is in. Any picture opens full size with its source and where it hangs today.
A second page carries the research: a timeline of Caravaggio’s life, a catalogue of every painting mentioned, and the sources.
The Yarn Documentary Club at docclub.yarnpodcast.com. Sixty-seven themed collections of documentaries, shelved as books.
Each book opens rather than expanding into a list. Every leaf has a front and a back hinged at the spine, so turning a page shows the reverse of the one before it. Film pages carry a still, the year, the director and a short note.
