According to several articles, visual literacy is constantly becoming more
and more important in our society. In her article about aesthetics in
relation to web design, Lisbeth Thorlacius argues that "Visual symbols
have become an integral part of our daily lives" and "it is increasingly
relevant to understand their communicative effects" (66)."A significant
portion of the internet experience relies on the visual" (Keegan, 165) and
more everyday actions are done with the help of the internet. "Images...are
quickly becoming the medium for information transfer" (Keegan, 176) because
"[they] mean more than words" (Thorlacius, 66). Pinterest is, first and
foremost, a collection of the visual. By minimizing linguistic communication,
it puts the focus on images and how they interact with one another to
produce a message.
"[Pinterest] is a VISUAL space and people are after great images" (Harper).
The images on Pinterest come from all over the internet and, as Adams and
Hamm say, "although every media borrows from others, at some point it takes
on a momentum of its own" (qtd in Keegan, 170). Even though Pinterest is
a collection of images pulled from many different sites, it becomes a community
for self-expression and through recontextualization, various images from
all kinds of different websites take on new meanings to become inspiration boards.
Real Simple Magazine offers these pins, and others like them, on their pin board
"New Uses for Old Things." When looking at these three images in particular,
the text is almost unnecessary. The photos are simple, colorful, and salient
They communicate the represented ideas very quickly and clearly. Not only
are these pins helpful, but they are presented in a way that makes them
interesting and worth repinning. The images on the right and left have been
repinned many more times than the one in the middle. This is evidence of their
salience and simple appeal. When scrolling through a pinboard that may have
anywhere from fifteen to fifteen hundred pins, the images that are more salient
(those that stand out) are going to be repinned more often.