Do you even Pin, bro?

Up until 2010, inspiration images were analog, baby: we had tear sheet binders, full of slip-cases bound on three rings. We ripped the glossy pages of Vogue and Domino and filed them away meticulously by hand. Ask any Interior Designer, Graphic Designer, Stylist, or professional creative who’s been around since before 2010 — I’ll bet you they still have stacks of these binders, full of absolutely delicious vintage magazine pages.

I was a first-gen blogger when Pinterest came out. I remember the collective thrill of its arrival: a place to corral all of our inspiration images, online, in an organized fashion? Sign us up! It took off almost immediately, granting ease and grace to a process that used to be clunky and time-consuming. Pinterest quite simply digitized and democratized the mood board. Here was a place to find the images we oft-referenced for inspiration in a matter of clicks!

Pinterest fell out of fashion for a while, but Gen-Z has since embraced it — and sent it soaring to new heights, capitalizing on its wealth of imagery to mood board their beloved “aesthetics”. I’ve recently fallen back in love with it as well, and since I’ve been using it for more than 10 years, some of the images I cataloged are right about to be *vintage* — ooh la la.

Here are some of my favorite boards. (And you can find me on Pinterest right here.)

• Spaces + Places is my most consistently updated board, probably because I’ve moved twice in the past handful of years and my appetite for interior inspiration has been voracious. Head here for beautiful interiors of all kinds. It’s fun to scroll back and see how I went from loving blue and white to a more neutral palate as I grew older.

• Great Personal Style is where I catalog all of my favorite street style looks. There are many years of fashion weeks on here, from New York to Paris to Copenhagen.

• Blazers is one of my super-granular boards dedicated to specific colors and articles of clothing. I use it as a practical reference when I’m getting dressed or thinking through new season shopping. I have lots of boards like this, dedicated to everything from the white button-down and leather jackets to classic black. Speaking of leather jackets, after a long hiatus, I’m into them again! My Pinboard helped me remember how to wear one. I got this really inexpensive vegan leather one recently and the fit is killer. (Warning, high sell-out risk.)

• Art + Lit is one of my favorite boards. It’s where I’ve pinned gobs of beautiful artwork and book covers. Whenever I need color references for a design project, I often head here first.

• Editorial Design is a board I keep for when we need layout inspiration at Graves Creative — for newsletters like this one, and also for our clients for who we do email marketing and web design, too.

• Food Styling is another board I keep for our team at the studio. We shoot a LOT of food. A lot. We’re always hungry (heh, pun) for new ideas, especially simple ones we can use on the fly. And since we also work with real estate developers, it never hurts to keep a placemaking board, either.

Let's Be Pinterest Friends

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