Hack Your Pinterest

Want to know how to "pimp out" your Pinterest?
Lets do this.

What you're looking at below is my Pinterest, customized to use the Pinterest boards as a contiguous banner.

Here's a link to a Photoshop .psd template I created to make creating a Pinterest banner easier for you.
http://www.mediafire.com/?61eemcnv5vosmo6


I did this in a similar way to how users have been "hacking" their Facebook Timeline covers.

A little background:

So everyone from professional graphics designers to 13 year old girls w/a pirated copy of Photoshop have been meticulously customizing their Facebook timeline to incorporate the format into an "optical illusion" type thingie (scientific term).  This one by Louise Lundberg is my favorite that I've seen.

Here's another example.

Using a downloadable template that has all the dimensions of Facebook's format premade into a clipping mask allows one to easily drag and drop a large image to be be automatically clipped by photoshop to include the right sizes.  Then one just has to copy and paste the timeline cover image and the user pic image and save them to new files and upload them to Facebook, and voila!  You now have the coolest Facebook of all your friends.

But did you know you can do something similar with Pinterest?  I've created the template for download already.  It took me awhile to figure out the dimensions, so I've done all the heavy lifting already.

One thing about the Pinterest format is that it is quite long and narrow.  Very few stock images work well with this and neither will photos taken with a traditional camera (unless you have a DSLR with a wide angle lense etc.)  So to find good photos to use for a banner you should search for what's called "panoramic" photos

Google Advanced Image search has an option to search for panoramic images.  That is your best bet.  Otherwise think of things that are wide and narrow.  I used a wiener dog.  You could also use an arrow, or a shot of a face just showing the eyes, etc.

You can make use of an entire row of boards to create a contiguous banner, or you can make one board to display as a complete image.  Example below:

Or here's another example of how to create a branded "row" of Pinterest boards:

The possibilities are endless.  You could make a banner out of the 4 large panels, you could make 2 images out of 2 large panels a piece, you could make one contiguous image out of a large panel and the 4 small panels, or you could do Asian level difficulty and make a banner using 4 large panels and 16 small panels (like I did with the wiener dog).

Contact me on Twitter w/any questions.  @SpecialFester

Happy pinning!