Pinterest, Baby Showers, and Design: inspiration for everyone.

By Michelle Peck

As I am approaching the much anticipated arrival of my first born son, my design background has played a crucial role in getting ready for the big day. Whether it’s thinking of the perfect color for the nursery, strategizing what products to buy, or decorating onesies at baby showers, there is a lot of design and planning that goes into prepping for a new baby. Enter Pinterest, the photo collecting and sharing website that is used to create mood boards featuring inspiration, ideas, and product imagery from other sites on the web. It’s now said to be the number three social network behind Facebook and Twitter and provides a convenient way to “pin” and organize information in a beautiful, stylized way. Thanks to Pinterest, I’ve designed the perfect nursery, my sisters put on my dream baby shower, and I continue to be inspired in my career as an interactive designer. Here are three useful ways I’ve used Pinterest to inspire design in my personal and work life.

The Mood Board: A perfect starting point for collecting design ideas.

With any design project, there are a few things to start thinking about before getting started. What is the concept or theme? What colors will work best to set the mood you are going for? Are there any textures that could add richness and bring the design to life? A lot of these questions get answered through the creation of a mood board; a one page photo collage of different elements that work together and start to form a clear vision. Pinterest is the perfect platform for creating mood boards for any project.

Recently, I used Pinterest to help inspire themes for the nursery we’ll be spending so much time in over the next few months. After browsing the web for ideas and gathering photos, I pieced together a light, airy room design that had elements of the sea. My pins inspired me to design the nursery as a nautical theme with misty blue walls, white furniture, and natural accents.
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The Collaborative Approach: How getting a group involved can spark great concepts.

I think everyone can agree that more heads are better than one when it comes to concepting the next big thing. Collaboration has the power of turning a good idea into a great idea. One of the smartest features Pinterest has to offer is allowing multiple people to post photos onto the same board. These group pin boards provide a collective approach to finding inspiration and allow more sharing of ideas.

With three sisters in different cities excited to start planning my baby shower, Pinterest allowed them to share ideas easily by setting up a group board. Every detail from invitations, decorations, crafts, and food could be conceptualized as a team with each new pin. Using inspiration from the group board and putting their own crafty spin on things, my sisters’ threw me a picture perfect nautical themed shower with hand made flags, chalkboard frames, a onesie design station, and a complete cupcake bar with plenty of toppings for all.

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The Designer Toolbox: Resources, gadgets and infographics ready to go.

With babies and party planning aside, there are many other great resources on Pinterest that any professional designer can lean on. Many pins link back to articles, blog posts, and how-to videos with useful and interesting content to learn from. Mashable has a pin board dedicated strictly to infographics. Colour Lovers has boards for each color in the color wheel. And Fast Co.Design pins products UI fanatics drool over. Tapping into these resources provide not only inspiration, but useful tools for learning and growth as a designer.
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To learn more about Pinterest and how you can use it to find inspiration, Mashable has a nice collection of articles to browse through.

And make sure to follow Jacob Tyler’s Pin Boards to see what we find interesting in our always evolving industry.