Okay, you've definitely heard of Pinterest. The question is, do you know how to use it properly?
Pinterest is often overlooked by the design community—graphic designers and product designers, we're looking at you—but it is a valuable tool when used properly.
Pinterest is more than vision boards and aesthetic curations. It is a tool that can be used to invigorate your creativity, learn new skills and sell your work.
You might want to pin this article! It's full of tips and tricks on how to use Pinterest to grow and market yourself as a designer...
Build your design portfolio on Pinterest
Pinterest is a great place to house your digital design portfolio.
Organised your work into boards to showcase your different styles or group your work by project. Play around with how best to present your portfolio—it's your work, and you know best how to flaunt it.
Remember to properly tag, title, and label each post, this will ensure your work comes up in relevant search results—the algorithm is your best friend!
Stand-out Pinner
Julie Wieland is a graphic designer and streamer using Pinterest to showcase her work to a new audience.
As well as having different boards to showcase different aspects of her work, Julie uses Pinterest as a library of "How to" video tutorials. By offering her audience valuable lessons, she encourages them to engage further with her page and her work.
Find inspiration on Pinterest
Pinterest is not just a space to highlight your own work, but also to celebrate and learn from the work of your fellow designers.
Pinterest houses original content from thousands of creatives, let yourself get lost in the rabbit hole and use what you find to reignite your own creativity.
Pin your favourite work to different boards on your profile and reference them when you're in need of a burst of inspiration. Having inspiration boards on your profile will also help prospective clients get a better sense of your style and reference points—a nice extension to your own portfolio.
Stand-out Pinner
Designer and photographer Chad Syme curates inspiration boards from other creatives' content.
With reference boards for everything from typography to branding, Chad Symes uses Pinterest as a virtual storage unit for all his inspiration.
Gradually collating inspiration in boards dedicated to specific design movements like"Mid-Century Living" is a great time-saving hack—when a client references a specific era as inspiration, you'll already have a bank of ideas to pull from!
Educate yourself with Pinterest Design
Pinterest Design is The Wall Street Journal for designers!
Pitching themselves as "designing the home of inspiration" the Pinterest design blog contributes to current conversations in the design world, tackles common pain points for designers and spotlights interesting design projects happening around the world.
Pinterest Design blog is designed for the curious designer, make yourself a regular reader to stay informed and continue to grow in your creative career.
Stand-out article
"Experimenting Without Losing Your Soul" by Kaisha Hom.
Experimentation is at the core of creative innovation, when done right experimenting is empowering not nerve-wracking or worse, "soul-destroying". Read Kaisha's guide on sustainable and responsible experimentation, then go off and do some experiments of your own!
