The Pinterest Layout Will Not Save You

Some good points, but also some circular arguments. <i>Is MySpace's content primarily visual? No.</i> It seems, rather, that Myspace is retooling itself to appeal to viewers who do want to communicate visually. And a lot of younger people do, as can be seen from the popularity of 4chan and its derivatives. Myspace is also pitching itself as a destination for music artist promotion and music sharing, and visuals are important to that.

It will not save you, but... it works very well for tablet surfing, which is a must...<p>Mass market adoption of tablets is just around the corner. With a very large number of affordable tablets on the market (Google/Amazon/B&#38;N and the illusive Mac 7"-er later this week) this xmas will surely cause a landslide in traffic patterns.<p>Case in point: one of my clients (hospitality industry) has seen site traffic go from 5% mobile to 20%+ in little under a year. The iPad alone is responsible for 3/4 of that 20% these days. We're expecting 25-30% by the end of Q1 of 2013 (worldwide traffic, sooner if we look at the US market alone). Of interest perhaps, iPad:iPhone ratio now 4.7:1 (was the other way around a year ago)<p>Don't mind the digg design on my tablets, though I'd be fine with a different lay-out on the PC. Google+ does a great job of mobile vs tablet vs PC layout.<p>I absolutely <i>LOVE</i> the MySpace design as shown in the demo video, though I doubt it will be easy to fit all typical content into that framework (I see a lot of pretty demo data, now let me see the ugly user posts).

To my eye the Pinterest masonry grid is a trick for creating 'false excitement' around the content. In that way, it's like rapid edits or a shaky camera in video.<p>This works for a while, in certain domains, for people in certain leisurely modes of operation... but can also eventually lead to frustration and distrust. ("Why is this page making it hard for me to do an thoughtful review of what's new or important?")

Digg's redesign is especially bewildering. I double checked. On 1920x1200, I see exactly 6 headlines. On reddit, I get 16 (with photos!).<p>Not only are the (mostly useless) images unnecessarily huge, but the layout is fixed. Masonry, out of the box, uses the entire screen real estate.

These layouts work for social sites, where people want to feel that it's crowded. For other sites, it just looks ... well, crowded.

At the risk of sounding sexist, I think Pinterest appeals to women precisely because of the layout. Men tend to gravitate toward more utilitarian, structured layout that allows them to systematically scan large amounts of data one by one. Women tend to hunt and peck, floating around the page for interesting content. Pinterest's layout drives me nuts but it's the first website outside of Facebook that my wife has really gotten into.

I would agree that Pinterest's layout works terribly for any that is text based.<p>The issue for a lot of websites is getting users to be intrigued enough to spend 10 seconds checking out the site. Making the site familiar or tying it to a sexy trend can maximize short term traction but at the expense of long term traction (unoptimized UI). I don't think this is right or wrong, each company has to make their own decision.

Pinterest wasn't the first use of masonry, and any use of masonry isn't necessarily aping pinterest. Digg doesn't look or feel much like pinterest, neither does the verge (which seems to be quite successful). If anything, they appear to mimic traditional newspaper layouts. Digg is unsuccessful because its content is mediocre - not because it's using a layout that's un-conducive to displaying news.<p>I would argue that the assertion that news sites should be a dense list of headlines is false, and that Reddit and Hacker News thrive DESPITE their layouts rather than because of them. Making elements on a page visually distinct and easy to scan is not a bad thing.

Pinterest is a visual bookmarking tool. You scan it quickly and find things that interest you. It works because the images are topical. An album cover is usually tangentially topical. A news photograph may be topical, but you have to quantify what you're looking at by reading the description.<p>That's the beauty of Pinterest: its photos ARE its descriptions.<p>A news site, by comparison, is damned hard to navigate when the articles are not sequential. It's the difference between browsing an old Sears Wishbook and reading a magazine.

Pinterest does influence a lot of new and current design, but I'm not sure it's necessarily bad. There's something about the design that says "information is endless, we'll never get through it all", which I feel is a concept that comes to terms with online reality better than previous concepts that were imitations of paper print, which you would read from start to finish. Also there's a strange correlation with the proposed Metro aesthetic.

Pinterest works for the average Pinterest user primarily because it fits into the metaphor of the site (items pinned on a bulletin board) and therefore enhances the information architecture of the site. This acts as a functional multiplier across the entire site. The fact that the content is visual falls out from this but is not necessary; many pinned items are actually primarily textual. Sign up flow, email notifications, etc are tertiary.<p>Generally, a non-traditional layout (where traditional is flat list or tree-based) should be chosen if it is compatible with or can even reinforce the information architecture. E.g. if you're site is based on the idea of building a house out of bricks, a 'mason' layout would work :)

"The Pinterest Layout" is just another tool in the toolbox of a good designer, and many designs already features similar patterns way before people started pinning. It's only natural that successful sites get copied, but that doesn't make it a good thing.<p>SBNation.com recently rebranded all it's fan-sites (such as Celticsblog.com, Silverscreenandroll.com and many dozens of other American sports-related sites) and went for a full-on visual approach.<p>However pretty it looks, for a bunch of sportsblogs it seems like the wrong approach. Content got scattered and the mobile (responsive) design makes loading it (even on wi-fi) a pain in the rear.<p>Yeah, this one is a trend that, imo, can go f itself.

The MySpace layout is what happens when too many people are working on a product. It isn't being built around a job to be done, it seems that they are simply redesigning shit for the sake of redesigning shit.<p>Any product should ultimately be built, optimized, and if necessary, redesigned to best perform a job. Too many sites are just piggy-backing on other site's success because they simply don't know what else to do. In their mind I'm sure it seems like a great idea, but then nobody uses it. It's because the changes are not being made out of necessity. How do more people not see this?

One of the worst implementation of Pinterest Layout which I have seen is on : <a href="http://www.yebhi.com/online-shopping/mobiles-and-tablets.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.yebhi.com/online-shopping/mobiles-and-tablets.htm...</a><p>This is one of the largest online shopping site in India.<p>Its really difficult to locate a particular product, compare there price etc.

A similar issue is the preponderance of hyper-image-oriented mobile app designs at the expense of content and usability. Examples that come to mind for me are Urbanspoon, Flipboard (perhaps a controversial view), the new Chef's Feed app—if I can't figure out how to navigate because I'm blitzed by so many photos, something's wrong.

I am using a pinterest-inspired layout for an upcoming project (Collaborative poetry). Planning to come out with a beta this week, and apply for YC this month.<p>1. Can HNers give me some feedback on aesthetics (or other)? <a href="http://i.imgur.com/8BCE3.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/8BCE3.jpg</a><p>2. My domain is www.poe3.com. Is that an interesting hack?<p>Thanks in advance.

A thought, what if pinterest became popular because of it's content, despite it being presented poorly?

But in this kind of layout, how can one see footer of the website. the infinite scrolling is irritating sometimes...

<a href="http://intotweets.com" rel="nofollow">http://intotweets.com</a> is another product that is making use of the pinterest layout. It displays tweets with in place content, such as video, images, or website previews.<p>I'm still undecided if it's a good thing or not as to the experience it provides.

Wow, this past weekend I was looking for a library that did something like this and then here you come showing me right where to find it!<p>Thanks J

only the title, deserves a up