Using Pinterest as Your Inspiration Board

“I am not sure what look and feel that would appeal to me…”

“I know what I want when I see it…”

“I am not a very visual person. I don’t know what I like and not, let alone my audience.”

Sounds familiar? These are only a few comments that I sometimes get when my clients and I start our branding journey.

Enter clue:

A Pinterest Moodboard.

Pinterest moodboard is an important part of my branding process to help me understand what my client’s visions are, and to get better ideas what look and feel tickle their fancy more than others.

How to use a Pinterest Board for your creative project?

To key to creating your Pinterest moodboard that really brings your brand to life is to start with intention and creating “Sections”. This is really important part of the plan if you don’t want to fall into that rabbit hole that is kitchen renovation when you are supposed to do a research on your branding!

Let’s start with how to start with intention.

1. Knowing your What, Why, and Who

Our intention is to create a moodboard that will appeal to your target audience. So before we even dig down on putting images together on your Pinterest board, First things first: you have to figure out who you are, who you want to connect with, and what your core values are.

Ask yourself (and be honest about it) about why you start the business, what makes you difference and who are your real audience?

Who are the people who are most likely to spend their money to engage to your services or buy your products? What age group are they in and where do they live? What are their interests?

And why do you think they would prefer to buy from you? No, really – WHY?

TIPS:

Jolt down the answer for the following:

BUSINESS NAME: (Business Name)
TAGLINE: (Your tagline)
AUDIENCE: (Type – eg.Women, 20-45 years old)
THEME: (What you do & Problems you solve)
BRAND STORY: (Who you are – eg I help businesses in…… so they  can have …)

This will help you crafting your branding by targetting all your communication based on your brand map above.

2. Designing Your Visual Vibes

So, let’s have some fun here and create a Visual Vibe board. This will bring some clarity to the visual direction of your branding elements such as colors, textures, fonts and the overall feeling you want your audience to have when they experience your brand.

We will need to find words to describe the business and attract your tribe. You can also use the process to help creating consistency through out your brand, your communication, copy and even social post.

For example, my client Birthing Instincts who offers Hypnobirthing classes for pregnant ladies choose these words:

Tranquil – we want to have a soft and warmth feel to make students feel supported

Earthy – we want to be personal to each of our students and represent Bayside beaches where we are located

Rustic– we want to give unique and personal feel

Here are some list that I have collated that you might use to start your list: 

Exotic
Whimsical
Hi-end
Passionate
Warm
Knowledgeable
Bold
Friendly

… add more if you need to!

Now write your top 5 trigger words and WHY you choose them. Then Review.

How you describe these words – this will help you tell your brand story. 

TRIGGER WORD + REASON WHY:

_____________________________________

TRIGGER WORD + REASON WHY:

_____________________________________

TRIGGER WORD + REASON WHY:

_____________________________________

TRIGGER WORD + REASON WHY:

_____________________________________

TRIGGER WORD + REASON WHY:

_____________________________________

Got them? Now based on your trigger words, you should be able to think about the following now:

TRIGGER WORDS: (5-7 Trigger Words – Bold, Artistic…)

FONTS: (Font styles that you think resonate to your trigger words – Clean, Stylish, Hand Written)

COLORS: (Colors that you think might resonate to your trigger words) – Green, Blue, Teal)

PATTERN: (Types that you think might resonate to you trigger words – Hand-made, Geometric)

TIPS:

Sometimes you need to start working on your pins first to work out the colours and patterns so don’t worry if your initial jolts here are not accurate. You will have better visions one we finish our exercise.

3. Set up your Pinterest Board

Now open your Pinterest account and set up a board. Once you have your board, I recommend adding the information you gathered above on the top of your moodboard to help you stay focus.

Check out my Pinterest board for Eye Space below. We added the following on the header to keep us on track when we start pinning (PS  Since you’re limited to 500 characters, you want to make sure you keep the descriptions brief.)

BUSINESS NAME: (Business Name)
TAGLINE: (Your tagline)
AUDIENCE: (Type – eg.Women, 20-45 years old)
THEME: (What you do & Problems you solve)
TRIGGER WORDS: (5-7 Trigger Words – Bold, Artistic…)
FONTS: (Font styles – Clean, Stylish, Hand Written)
COLOURS: (Colors – Green, Blue, Teal)
PATTERN: (Types – Hand-made, Geometric

Once you have done this, we then will create into a few sections, depending on the job. A few sections that I have used included:

Logo – this will have collections of logos
Pattern
Colour Inspiration
Website
Visual Trigger

4. Start Pinning!

Now you can start pinning! The key to pinning is to keep with the intention that you jolted down above.

The trigger words are a good start to search. Let’s say for example, you have some ideas that you want your logo to be Rustic, so I would enter “rustic logo” and start pinning the ideas the search result.

Don’t forget to also look at the related search and more ideas in the bottom of each pins when you click on that.

Logo Inspiration Pins

Let’s go and see what we have done with the Birthing Instinct example. We have established that their trigger words include Tranquil, Nature and Rustic. Client has also established that their main target audience will be to-be-parents or couple with pregnant wives who resides in the Bay area in Melbourne.

So when they started looking for logo pins, they started with tranquil logo, nature logo and also feminine logo. This brings them to some very nice feminine pins (that they narrowed down to even more specific in the next stage).

TIPS:

You can also add different images and not limiting yourself to logo design when you search this. If you have some inspiration on what images, items or other things that you think might work well as part of your logo, pin them here!

Patterns & Colour Palette

Let’s take the Birthing Instinct’s example. The client specifically wants nature colours but in tranquil colours in feminine tones  ones that represent the beach area they are operating within.

So the search included beach colour pallet, sandy colours, and sunset.  

For the palette, they are specifically look for organic and nature and came out with heaps for handdrawn pattern (that we ended up incorporate in their branding).

Font Section

 The key with fonts are not finding the specific font in mind, but look for combinations of fonts that catch your eyes and match the general look and feel that will resonate to your customers and trigger words (eg – for rustic look you might look into brush style or old fashioned fonts, hipster look might warrant handwritten style fonts).

Visual Triggers

 Without trying to sound repetitive, Visual trigger can be anything that – well,  trigger your trigger words. It can be workspace images that have similar vibes with your trigger words, the look and feel that you think will relate to your customers, how they dressed, where they hang out (beach, park, shopping malls, you name it!) Literally anything that resonates to your customers and how you wanted to be perceived (ie. your trigger words)

Website Inspiration 

 When you look at websites that might inspire you, also jolt down comments on what elements on the website that appeals to you and your target audience. Is it the colours, is it the button style, slide style or perhaps the flow of the website. We want to get inspiration from these website, not by copying them but by learning the user experience that you gain from specific design.

Use search terms like ‘web design’, or ‘web layouts’,  and pin ones that resonate well with you.

See the final project for Birthing Instincts here. 

FINAL (IMPORTANT) STEP:

Deciding a theme for your logo, pattern and colours can be difficult.

To begin, gather as many images as you like, without thinking too much. You can break your image search into categories: fonts, colors, patterns, illustrations, and photos you think are cool.

When you find a pin you like, you can scroll down and use the ‘related pins’ feature to help you find images with a similar theme.

After you’ve collected all of your initial inspiration images, look at your board as a whole and edit it down until it feels cohesive and like a good representation of your brand.

Cull and cull and cull until you are left with the essence of your branding and your key message.