Hey there, Pinterest user or wanna be pinner! There are 150 million monthly active Pinterest users, 1+ billion boards and 50+ billion pins on Pinterest! Sounds overwhelming? I say it sure does. But I also say, let’s get started and design beautiful Pinterest pins to get noticed today!
One of the most important things to remember about Pinterest is that it is a visual search tool. Therefore users choose to pin, re-pin or save pins based on what they see. So it goes without saying, that adding eye-catchy pins to your Pinterest boards is crucial.
In our Pinterest Guide for Travel Bloggers, I shared how to set up optimised Pinterest boards, how to create and schedule SEO driven pins and also drive traffic to your website.
My main task today is to share with you the top tips that help me to design beautiful Pinterest pins. Let’s get started…
Design Beautiful Pinterest Pins
To design beautiful Pinterest pins is not that difficult really, but it can be labour intensive if you’ve never done it before. The ultimate Pinterest pin maker tools for designing beautiful pins are Canva or the Pinterest app.
The majority of Pinterest fans use Canva because of its handy preset Pinterest templates. While you can use the templates for your own pins, I recommend only using them for inspiration.
Be original. Design beautiful Pinterest pins with your own twist. Use different fonts and colours, but always make sure the images are aesthetically pleasing.
Mix and Match Your Fonts
Fonts can make or break your design. There are 3 main fonts to keep in mind, Serif (mostly used in magazines and printed publications) Sans serif (cleaner, easy to read on laptops, phones and tablets) or display fonts (fancy ones!).
You have to be extra careful when pairing these fonts to create beautiful Pinterest pins. I haven’t always been font aware, but now I believe in the ‘less is more’ rule, as you can see in the 3 pins below. The white background and a simple picture give us a lot of room to work with.
One of the images features my all-time favourite font combination of Cinzel and Quattrocento. Both are elegant and I think work really well with the food pins.
The other Pinterest image displays the Playfair Display font. Remember the Serif fonts? That’s one of them. While I haven’t mixed the fonts here, I added a little prominence by bolding the title. Otherwise, the Playfair Display font could go well with Raleway font.
You don’t always have to mix the fonts to get the best results. You could use hierarchy to indicate which part of the text is most important. Do so by using bold letters, italics or simply by making the text larger.
Another great combination is Open Sans (Sans font) and Lora (Sans Serif). I love the clean look of Open Sans font while giving the pin a bit of luxury with the Lora font in the text.
Give Your Text Some Breathing Space
I see a lot of pins with text slashed across the image and it doesn’t always look pretty. I’ve done it before too, many times. The bigger text doesn’t always mean more prominence, it’s how you present it. If using shapes, leave some space around the text, this way the title will go easier on the pinners and your own eyes.
Aligning Text is Crucial
Make sure it’s centred if you want your text to appear in the middle or aligned when you want it to appear on one or the other side. Use the indicators (the tiny dotted lines) that appear on your design as you drag your text/image to align it correctly.
Text Spacing (tracking) is Important
When you design your pins in Canva, it gives you the ‘text space’ option. If your text is space out too much, it might look a little odd. If necessary, use letter-spacing (tracking), it will add a unique touch to your pins. Just be wary not to space it in or out too much, make sure the text is still easily readable.
The same goes for line-height. Reasonably condensed text works nicely when designing beautiful Pinterest pins for your blog or your business.
Here is an example of the promotional graphic we did for our recent Black Friday newsletter. While our brand font here is the same throughout, the line ‘black friday & cyber monday’ is spaced out. It’s just a small design detail but helps the graphics look a bit more contemporary.
Zoom In
When designing beautiful Pinterest pins, zoom in. It will be easier to see whether your design is well aligned and organised. Don’t disregard small details, they are usually what matters the most.
Use Filters
Bad picture? Use filters to bring out the text. This works well with lower quality, darker or very busy images. If an image has lots of details and you are not in the mood for using a shape, your text will simply get lost.
It also works well if you are after an atmospheric pin. In this case, blur the image out or adjust the contrast.
Colour Your Pins
Colour matching just like font combining is another important aspect of creating professional and eye-catchy pins.
Using colours can be really scary. But it gets easier with practice, also the iconic colour wheel comes very handy. If you are less adventurous, start with one colour scheme (monochromatic) and use lighter/darker shades of the colour to enhance your pin.
If you are interested in a splash of colour on your pins, pair the colours that are next to each other on the colour wheel. Blue and green or (my favourite) pink and blue always work nicely together.
Don’t be afraid to experiment. There’s nothing wrong with pink and yellow as long as you remember to match them with the right shade. It adds personality to your design and also creates a brand. But just maybe keep it toned down a little.
My rule of thumb is to match colours either to the image or to each other. However, sometimes, if I like the image and want to cover it as little as possible, but still make the title stand out, I’ll use a completely different colour.
Think Vertical
Pinterest freaks (including me) are all about vertical pins. While a landscape image looks better on a website, trying to adjust it to the specific pin size might compromise the quality. The less cropping and stretching, the better!
Mixing in one or two such images for pinners on your blog will increase your chances of pinnable images. Plus you will also be able to cheat a little and pin the same content multiple times. Bonus!
I hope you found the tips handy and are ready to design beautiful Pinterest pins for your blog!
