Thoughts/
STOP MOODBOARDING. START LOOKING.
Paris, September 2026
We’re back at college, and tomorrow I get to meet a new group of design students. It feels like a good moment to revisit the “get off Pinterest” debate.
It’s become surprisingly easy to spot when someone’s sources of inspiration are limited to the usual image-curation platforms. Not because the images are bad, quite the opposite: they’re often beautiful, coherent, and very easy to turn into a convincing selection.
The problem is that coherence isn’t the same thing as a point of view.
We’re all unique by definition. But if we want that uniqueness to show up in our work, we need to look for things that resonate deeply with us, not just things that look good to everyone else.
I grew up in Brazil, in the chaotic, massive city of São Paulo, where I developed a taste for subcultures, urban grit, improvisation and imperfection. The streets are still one of my main sources of inspiration, I take pictures on my daily walks without knowing if they’ll ever be useful. Sometimes they are, often they aren’t. But collecting helps me notice what captivates me and, over time, understand my own taste.
General culture matters too: art, music, architecture, cinema, literature, history... they all widen the field. But you don’t need a prestigious reference to have a good one. An ordinary scene like a piece of tape holding together a torn poster can be just as interesting.
Pinterest isn’t the problem. The problem is stopping there.
Go outside. Visit a gallery, a street market, a forest. Talk to an older person, to a kid, or to someone from a completely different background. Read a book. Eat street food. Look through old photographs. Look at the stuff you normally walk past. Turn your references upside down. Mix, distort, break, combine, reject. Collect without knowing where it’s going.
Not everything needs to become a “mood”. Sometimes you’re just figuring out what you like.
Use Pinterest. Use whatever you want. Just don’t confuse a platform with the world. The world is bigger, messier, stranger and your point of view is interesting precisely because it’s yours.
It’s become surprisingly easy to spot when someone’s sources of inspiration are limited to the usual image-curation platforms. Not because the images are bad, quite the opposite: they’re often beautiful, coherent, and very easy to turn into a convincing selection.
The problem is that coherence isn’t the same thing as a point of view.
We’re all unique by definition. But if we want that uniqueness to show up in our work, we need to look for things that resonate deeply with us, not just things that look good to everyone else.
I grew up in Brazil, in the chaotic, massive city of São Paulo, where I developed a taste for subcultures, urban grit, improvisation and imperfection. The streets are still one of my main sources of inspiration, I take pictures on my daily walks without knowing if they’ll ever be useful. Sometimes they are, often they aren’t. But collecting helps me notice what captivates me and, over time, understand my own taste.
General culture matters too: art, music, architecture, cinema, literature, history... they all widen the field. But you don’t need a prestigious reference to have a good one. An ordinary scene like a piece of tape holding together a torn poster can be just as interesting.
Pinterest isn’t the problem. The problem is stopping there.
Go outside. Visit a gallery, a street market, a forest. Talk to an older person, to a kid, or to someone from a completely different background. Read a book. Eat street food. Look through old photographs. Look at the stuff you normally walk past. Turn your references upside down. Mix, distort, break, combine, reject. Collect without knowing where it’s going.
Not everything needs to become a “mood”. Sometimes you’re just figuring out what you like.
Use Pinterest. Use whatever you want. Just don’t confuse a platform with the world. The world is bigger, messier, stranger and your point of view is interesting precisely because it’s yours.