Most bloggers know that Pinterest is an amazing source of web traffic for your blog. Did you know that Pinterest is also a great source for a blog’s design inspiration? Secret Pinterest boards are an amazing resource for bloggers. They can help you plan your blog’s layout and design with ease.
In this post, I am going to discuss how I use secret Pinterest boards to plan my blog’s layout and design. This is an amazingly simple and effective way to create a profitable blog design on your own in no time.
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I love secret Pinterest boards. I use them in much of my content planning and marketing. It’s so convenient to save relevant posts to a secret board which you can link to in your future blog posts. You can also save pins for scheduling on Tailwind from an Android phone (until they come out with the Android app).
However, one of my favorite ways to use secret Pinterest group boards is for planning the layout and design of my blog. I have been re-organizing and updating my blog, so there’s no time like the present to update my blog’s design.
One of the best methods I have found for organizing my thoughts on designing my blog in to create a secret Pinterest board to collect those ideas. This allows me to pin specific items that I come across while I am on Pinterest and return to them at a later time.
Creating Secret Pinterest Boards
To show you how this works, I first need to show you how to create a new secret board in Pinterest. The examples I will use in this post will be for a craft blog that’s currently on the backburner. Be sure to consider your content for your niche when gathering ideas for your blog’s design and layout.
First, go to your Pinterest profile page. From there, select “Boards” under your profile name and description. Now that you have selected boards, click on the first tile with the red circle with a plus sign in the middle of it. This will allow you to create a new board.
First, you will need to name your board. Enter the name that you wish to give your board (don’t worry, no one else can see it) and be sure to click the small toggle switch below the Name box that is marked “Secret” (as seen below) to keep the board private. If you fail to do this, don’t worry. You can edit the board later and change it to secret at any time.
Now, you can add inspiration to your board or add sections to keep your ideas organized. I love that Pinterest added the option to add sections to boards. They work really well for uses like this.
In my example, I am going to add some sections that are relevant to my blog’s design and layout. For example, branding is something I always keep in mind when designing my blog, so I will create a unique section for this topic.
Think of your secret board as a mood board. It will set the tone and direction of your blog’s design.
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Getting Ideas for Your Design
Now that you have a board and sections, it’s time to look for content for your board. Remember this is a secret board, so you can pin items that aren’t relevant to your brand if they inspire you. This won’t confuse Pinterest or your audience.
I always start with the Pinterest search feature when looking for ideas. For this blog, I am looking for a more rustic design with pops of orange and maybe grays and blues, so I will search for orange color palettes and pin the images that I like. You can also search for pictures with the colors you wish to use and create your own color palette.
Below is a screenshot of the color palettes that appeared when I search for “orange color palette.” For this design, I want to look for colors that will look good in menus and headers but will still be easy to read and look great on blog graphics.
Try to be open when considering your color palette. You never know when you will come across something unique that can help your brand stand out.
Next, I will look through some blog layouts and WordPress theme designs for inspiration. If your theme doesn’t have a feature you like, don’t worry. I have found that you can do almost anything you like with the right plugins and some CSS.
(If you would like to learn more about how to design better blog posts with HTML and CSS, check out this post.)
Designing Your Blog from Your Secret Board
Once you have a good idea of what you like and dislike, it is easy to determine the direction you will want to go with your design. After several minutes of pinning, this is what the sections of my secret Pinterest board look like.
I prefer to start with branding. Branding is much more than a logo or theme. It is the foundation of a business. Branding goes beyond looking pretty. It will represent your business as you gain a reputation and following. Your brand should be easily recognizable to your audience.
For example, I use branding in my Pinterest images. I try to stick to a few Pinterest templates, colors, fonts and use my logo and website address to brand my images. When someone sees one of my pins, I want them to quickly recognize it as belonging to my brand and repin or click it.
This is something I have worked hard on in recent months and it is paying off.
Review Your Inspiration
To start developing a brand, I am going to view the pins in my “Branding” section of my “Design and Layout” secret board. Below is a screenshot of the board’s contents.
Color Palettes
As you can see, the color palettes I chose all fall within a theme of orange, brown, yellows, green, and blue-greys. I’m going to start by choosing my branding colors from this selection.
To do this, I will choose two to three photos and pick colors out of the image (using a color selection tool with a hex value) to use in my color scheme. I will mix and match these shades until I am satisfied. I give each color a description and include the hex code of the color beside it in notepad and copy and paste the custom color into boxes using Canva.
As an example, the colors for jackieison.com came from a Sleep Number mattress ad. I know it sounds crazy, but this is where I found my inspiration! I used this ad and its colors to create the color palette I use today. Below is the picture and the color palette I created from it.
Get Your Hex Color Values
Your first step is the obtain your hex color values. The easiest to do this is to use a color selection tool for hex color values. One I have used before is Color Picker Online.
All you have to do is upload your inspirational images and click on an area of the image to get the hexidecimal (or hex) value for your color. As you can see in the picture below, I have uploaded an image and clicked on the background with the crosshairs. Once I have done this, the image color values populate to the left.
The HTML Code on the Color Picker Online tool is your hex value. Hex simply stands for hexidecimal or 6 digits. Each color in the RGB (red green blue) color scale is represented by two digits in this 6-digit code. It is sometimes called Hex triplet because there are 6 digits and three colors.
You will need the Hex value for nearly all of your web graphics, so I recommend copying the HTML code above and pasting it into a Notepad document with a color description. I keep a notepad document open with these codes. It helps me to easily create branded images with little effort.
Create a Visual Palette
You can easily create a visual palette in Canva to help with staying on-brand. Go to Canva and select a vertical image for your palette (I chose the basic Pinterest image). Then, click on “Elements” in the menu on your left and select “Grids.” Now, choose a grid with the number of colors you wish to use on your website.
My palette includes 4 colors, but I only use two of these primarily. The other two are neutrals. Just remember not to go overboard when selecting colors for your blog. You can choose three major colors and a light neutral (for backgrounds) and dark neutral (for text).
For now, I am simply going to choose 5 colors for my palette using the color picker tool to obtain the hex code values.
Once you have selected the grid, click on the “Elements” menu again, but this time choose “Shapes.” Select the solid square shape. Once the shape is on your image, stretch it into place to cover an image pane in the grid as seen below.
Now click on the “Copy” link in the top-right until you have enough boxes to fill all of the panes in the grid. Once you have done this, arrange them over each pane and you should have a palette, like the one below.
Now you are ready to change the colors of the boxes in your image. To do this, click on a box, then on the color in the top-left, as seen in the screenshot below.
In the drop-down, under “Document Colors” choose the box with a plus sign in it. Now, you will see the following.
Now, copy and paste a color from the Color Picker Tool that you pasted into Notepad. Repeat this for each of the rectangles until you have all of the colors from your palette. You should have a palette like the one below.
Your color palette isn’t set in stone, if you don’t like the colors, you can adjust them until you are satisfied. If you would like a visual design reference you can also add text to the colors to indicate their color code. I simply keep color descriptions and the codes in a Notepad doc and copy and paste them directly from Notepad.
Font Pairings
Now that I have chosen my colors, I will move on to fonts and font pairings. I like to have two easy to read fonts and one decorative font. I only use cursive or handwritten style fonts in my Pinterest images and my logo. These fonts can be difficult to read, so it’s best to stick with basic serif or sans serif fonts for your blog copy.
I will save a variety of fonts and font pairings to my Pinterest Inspiration board. Below is an example of some font pairing pins.
I selected the one that is located on the far right. If you would like to visit the website for this pin, you can click on the pin or visit Sugar Studios Design here.
Before you settle on a font, make sure that you can use it on your blog. The fonts on this image are by Google and are free and readily available. Some fonts require you to pay to use them. Also, check to see if your graphics software allows you to upload them. Sometimes you can add them to a program, but if you can’t add them, choose another font.
Once you choose two or three fonts you love, try them out together on mockup blog graphics. Create titles and write text to see how the fonts will work for the style of your blog. Bear in mind, these will become part of your branding, so you will be using them a lot.
Below is an example of text with Lora headings in bold and body text in Source Sans Pro. These came from the Pinterest image above. I have also use the colors from the color palette to demonstrate what I mean by combining elements on a graphic.
From this experiment, I can tell I don’t like the two bottom colors with the others in my graphics. However, I like the other colors and the font very well. I can easily adjust these elements until I am satisfied with my color scheme and fonts.
Creating a Blog Layout
Your blog layout needs to include a number of important elements. That’s why it’s a great idea to collect layouts and decide the type of layout that you need for your blog’s success before you create one.
First, I recommend writing down navigational elements that you need to include on your blog. You will use these elements as a checklist when viewing blog layouts. If you love a blog but it is missing something important, remember that you can always change the layout to meet your needs.
Once you have your list, view the blog layouts you have collected in your secret Pinterest board. Choose which of these blog layouts you can adjust to meet your needs. Once you have chosen a layout, I recommend drawing the basic layout on paper to create a mockup of your blog and include your navigation elements.
Once you have chosen the layout, you can use Elementor or another page builder to build your homepage and other elements exactly as you would like.
(You can read more about creating pages using a page builder in this post.)
Headers and Menus
Headers and menus can be combined or separate. Both important parts of your blog’s design. It’s a great idea to pin ideas for both to your secret Pinterest board.
Headers help brand your blog while the menu improves navigation to helps your readers navigate your blog. There are loads of inspiration on Pinterest for both of these items.
To create a header for your blog, you can use Canva. Make sure to create a new document that is the size your theme recommends for your header. You can usually find this on your theme’s website.
If you want something unique and don’t have any design skills, you can find headers for free or for sale on Pinterest as well. You will have to decide for yourself what is right for your blog and your budget. I am comfortable with design, so I simply use headers as inspiration to create my own headers in Canva.
You can create menus in your theme under Appearance > Customization or use a menu plugin to create your own custom menus. Both of these will ensure that your blog’s design includes important navigational elements.
You can also go a step farther and use mapping to create a custom menu in your header. This is more difficult to accomplish because it requires image mapping via graphics software and including the code for the map in your theme header.
Do what you are the most comfortable with. If you choose to have a custom design created for you, your secret board will come in handy. You can use it as a starting point for meeting with your graphic designer.
The Many Uses of Secret Pinterest Boards for a Blog’s Design
As you can see, secret Pinterest boards are a great tool for planning your blog’s design. There are loads of blog design ideas available on Pinterest. Make use of those to create the blog of your dreams.
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