Better Pinterest? ✱ Cosmos.so — Review as a Graphic Designer

Pinterest but better? I stumbled across cosmos.so while looking for inspiration for my on-going project.

They claim to be the best Pinterest alternative, specially created for Designers, Artists, Architects and all sorts of creative minds!

Currently it’s an invite only program, and I happen to get an access and I’ve been given 3 free invites for anyone interested to use it, comment here to claim it. 💭

Let’s talk about Pros and Cons of Cosmos 💫

Pros

✨ Latest Design Trends are all over cosmos! while Pinterest has a “themed” feed, cosmos on the other hand has more of a “out of the box” suggestions, while it may not be intentional, it sure is good to get quite a random feed yet it’s within constrains of what you want to see. something fresh!

🧑‍🎨 It’s a Creator based platform, The first thing one does is follow a creator while entering cosmos and then your feed is set according to the person you started following or a set Moodboard which cosmos calls “Clusters” this also means, if you’re a creator, your work can get more recognition.

⬇️ The biggest of them all. you can import from Pinterest! I have tested this to import my “Indian Graphic Design” moodboard from Pinterest and it’s really slow but then the quality you get is impressive.

👯‍♀️ No more disappearing images! I cannot tell how big of a problem this is on Pinterest. I save something and then it just disappears, If I save like 100 pins and check after about a month, there’s only 60 left. While I am yet to test if this issue is not present on cosmos, I’m almost certain that this won’t be an issue, hopefully 🤞

☁️ Lighter than Pinterest. I have tested both and somehow it outperforms Pinterest, I’ve set both of them running on their explore page and made 3 scrolls in the feed down and up. Left it running and compared the Memory (RAM) usage and it turns out that Cosmos was around 104 MB while Pinterest kept increasing from 130–152 MB.

🎨 Search by color. I’ve saved this pro for last as it’s something game changing! you can finally search things not just by typing in “cyan” in search bar rather “#00FFFF” Hex codes! This is such an advantage as most of the time our projects have a certain color palette and searching for that specific coloured designs could be quite a hassle.

Cons

🪨 Ui feels heavy. What do I mean by that? it’s clearly better optimized as per my test right? Yes, true but the simplicity that Pinterest has with better loading speed and less of those wishy washy premium animations cannot be compared as of now. sure they feel and look good but it’s something I can tell I will get annoyed by while searching for something. I need things done quick, and just maybe I’m too impatient for the slow scroll or animations.

🤔 Content is missing. there’s a lot of niches that are missing. but this should not be taken as a con as it’s in early stages and if you are a creator, you are at an advantage to introduce this platform with those niches and you will get more discovery as personal brand.

🔎 View Similar is okay. again we can’t tell if this really is a con as there’s not enough content for Ai to process. when you check similar images for let’s say a “design poster” it will surely show you decent images or “elements” as they call it. even elements that match the colors flawlessly but when you go to specific niches, the Ai fails to match.

I feel like most of cons I have talked about can be ignored with time as I get used to it or the algorithm gets better. I do not feel like I will be missing anything from Pinterest that I cannot find on here. that being said, the question stands…

Would I use it as a Graphic Designer for Inspiration? 🤔

Yes, I wasn’t expecting to answer it with yes but the selling point for me is the algorithm which offers unique designs and content that I have not seen before, which is really big for me as a designer who needs fresh content to get more ideas as such. But I certainly will not be switching to cosmos entirely, It needs time to get better and my algorithms still weak, It will take time but I can tell I will be doing this switch, if not now then later.

Do you find this new Pinterest, the new yet better Pinterest? If so, let me know your thoughts! 💭