While working on my T-shirt designs the last week I have been thinking a lot about the role that Pinterest has in my design process and life as a graphic design student.

I love Pinterest! It was the second social media network that I joined and was instantly addicted to being bombarded with cool ideas, quotes, pictures, and recipes. As I’ve grown, my use of Pinterest has changed because I am now often on the design feed of the site/app. But I realize that I have a love/hate relationship with the design category of Pinterest.

I like to go on and see the way that people use type, color, and white space that will help give me inspiration for projects. I usually save things that I really love to my different design boards so that I can see the things that really inspired me at a later date. However, I have now gotten into a routine that when I start a project, sketch, or illustration; my first step is sometimes to go to Pinterest. If it’s not my first step, I go on when I feel like I’m stuck or out of ideas. And this really frustrates me!! I know I have good ideas and that I don’t need to do this but I do it anyway just to make sure that I’m doing it right or something.

The other thing with this is that sometimes I’ll go on while either just browsing or for a project inspiration and it doesn’t really inspire me, it just makes me feel like I don’t have good ideas because I see all of these good ideas. I know this is stupid but when you feel stuck in a project you start to feel these kind of things.

So I have decided that for me, I need to break away from my “Pinterest crutch” for a little. I’m not giving up Pinterest, that would be crazy, but I’m only going to look at the design page to browse right now, not to get inspired for specific projects. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t go to it for inspiration for projects, but for me right now, I have to get away from doing this to feel better about my own ideas and my ability to come up with my own ideas.