Color, through an inspired lens
Scaling color to infinite possibilities
Written by Andreas Helin and Simon Blockley
Throughout our evolution of Pinterest’s brand identity, color always remained as a central point of focus. How might color contribute to an identity that aims to capture an infinite spectrum of interests, dreams and expressions?
When it comes to brand systems a core color palette is key. It provides immediate familiarity and sets the guardrails that allow the brand to flex while always maintaining a connective visual thread. At the same time, a fixed color palette can inherently feel contradictory to an inspired mindset. Color is central to the idea of inspiration — even in the absence of visuals, any word, sound or taste can spark an imaginative sense of color.
If our brand is meant to reflect the unexpected and eclectic worlds of Pinterest, how can color be leveraged in an equally free, yet own-able and scalable manner?
A contextual approach to color
Historically, Pinterest took a brand-first approach to color led by our hero red. While an approach that nailed brand-consistency, it was also not quite an inspired one. Our brand color approach now reflects the inspired worlds of Pinterest. Colors are influenced by their surroundings — ever changing, unexpected and emotive.
We encourage drawing from the contextual source rather than limit these colors to a set palette — be it a visual or even a simple word that sparks a colorful association. We call these two approaches, image theory and language theory.
Image-inspired palettes can draw directly from corresponding visuals or contrast by drawing from adjacent and complementary tones:
In the absence of accompanying visuals, language-inspired palettes can be derived from the searches, board names, themes and trends:
Scaling a contextual system
In theory, a contextual color approach without set palettes might not sound like the smartest way to scale a global brand — and it’s not. Or at least not without a helpful tool. In support of scaling an open approach to color, we’ve built a color picker tool that can draw contextual and accessible color palettes from any image, word or phrase.
How it works
The color picker tool enables anybody — regardless of design expertise — to generate contextual and accessible brand color palettes. Here’s how it works.
- Drag and drop
Drag and drop an image to create multiple color pairing variants using our image theory approach. - Search
In the absence of imagery, our language theory approach may be applied by searching for a word or phrase, then selecting a palette from relative images sourced from Pinterest. - Eye drop
If the color tool isn’t giving you quite what you’re looking for, you can select areas of the image to tweak the color output. - Accessibility checker
A WCAG button is always present to easily check if a desired palette meets AA or AAA accessibility standards. - Palette ranges + Swatches
Contextual palettes may range from 2 to 6 colors. Once landing on a palette, you can export Adobe swatches, or simply copy RGB, CMYK, PMS or hex values for each color swatch.
Baseline brand colors
While we’d love to always leverage contextual colors, we know that won’t always be possible. For these scenarios — such as high level brand messaging, reports, presentations, or company gifts — we’ve developed a core color set that aligns the contextual energy of our primary color approach.
Pin that red down
Fear not, the iconic Pinterest red isn’t being left behind. To help thread together our infinitely-inspired contextual approach to color, we’re introducing an always-red set of pushpins to our visual toolkit. These pins not only provide a playful and actionable aspect to the brand identity, but also a spirited sprinkle that reinforces Pinterest in a celebratory way.
This all results in a dynamic color approach that aims to be as fluid, personal and creative as Pinterest itself—and inherently capture that core feeling of inspiration.
Color can’t do it all though. It’s just one piece of the ever-evolving Pinterest brand puzzle. Check out further deep dives of our identity evolution and development of our new typeface, Pinterest Sans.
