Pinterest, the internet's greatest gift for last minute dinner decisions! No, really. The Peppermill team is often on Pinterest at 5:15pm, scrambling for a fast and healthy recipe to make after work. While this image-based social media platform is often used for home decor tips, DIY crafts and simple crock-pot meals, Pinterest is a great tool that helps our team brainstorm for the development of your brands.

In the last several years, Pinterest has played an important role in our Brand Discovery process. It's during this phase of our branding process where we really get to know our clients, their business, target audience and how their product or service betters the lives of consumers. What makes your business unique? How do you communicate with your audience? How should your interior space look and feel? What do your promotional materials look like? After research and a bit of soul searching, we then begin the design process by creating a moodboard with the help of Pinterest.

We consider Pinterest a great tool to help us capture the essence of your brand. Essentially, we transform the answers to questions asked in Brand Discovery into visuals to communicate your brand's aesthetic. A picture really is worth a thousand words! To start we search for words, feelings and design elements that we believe go along with the vision you have for your brand. We consider many elements when choosing Pinterest images: What are you trying to achieve? What words do you want your audience to use to describe you? What inspires you? What colors do you feel represent the feel of your brand? Which textures, fonts or patterns speak to and form your brand? This process helps turn your vision for the brand into something tangible on screen and a roadmap for creating your design elements.

While it's easy to get caught up in the fun of pinning (trust us, Pinterest can be addicting!), we choose images that we believe represent your brand and your target audience. We don't pin images simply because of our personal style or taste, because that doesn't necessarily speak to your target audience. It's important for both designers and business owners to represent the brand, not our own personal style and preferences.

We often work with our clients during this stage of the moodboard creation. We might even have you check in along the way or ask you to pin images that you feel represent the desired direction of your brand. That way, we know our design direction is on the right path. While you may envision a "retro" vibe for your brand, retro can mean a lot of things to different people. We may find images from the 1960s, but your definition of retro might be the 1800s! If we're on the same page from the very beginning of the design process, we can get it right not he very first try, or at the very least, have fewer revisions.

Your brand's moodboard serves as inspiration for your brand, not as our blueprint. Our goal is to not replicate the moodboard exactly, but to help develop the feeling, or the mood, of your brand. Once we spend time researching and making connections between images and your brand's mission and goals. we start to see patterns. There may be reoccurring colors, textures, font styles or other design elements that make up the bulk of your board? Once we start seeing a more cohesive set of images, we can narrow them down to create a foundation for the visual design aesthetic of your brand. The inspiration from you moodboard guides us throughout the entire design process, so we can create your logo, website, packaging and any other design elements needed for your brand.

Using Pinterest is a perfect example of how technology has transformed the design process. While techniques may change throughout time, the foundation for Brand Discovery remains the same. We use Pinterest for inspiration for developing our own design ideas, not just for ideas themselves. A successful, authentic brand can not rely on copying what has already been done, but by creating an original story that resonates with your consumers.