Just a really quick blog post as I add more of my illustrated recipes from They Draw and Cook to my website. As you may well know the layout for TDAC is very long horizontally (5000px x 1875px ) Not a problem - I love the challenge of finding exciting ways of filling this space.

However I did encounter a small drawback of this format - it doesn't work very well on Pinterest. On this site each image will be displayed at a maximum of 192px wide. My illustrated recipes were not shown in their best light. So with each new blog post and website update I would rearrange the different food, map, sketch etc elements into whats referred to as a 'tall pin.' Pinterest does not restrict the HEIGHT of pins. So if an image is (much) taller than its is wider it will be displayed in a way that will get you a lot of screen space - people will be able to view it for longer as they scroll down.

Let me demonstrate with the latest TDAC uploads pinned from my website...

Here the Futo-Maki sushi roll with the TDAC layout is in the middle. To the left you can see a version where I've rearranged the steps vertically so they do indeed take up more screen space.

On the far left are my illustrations from Beer Advocate magazine, and step by step pizza illustrations from TDAC arranged into tall pins - this is how they appear on the Pinterest feed. Both are approx 800-900px tall.

Darn it my Rose Syrup & Margarita illustrated recipe is not quite tall enough in this feed!!

Tall pins are so quick to create out of your existing artwork, and I can vouch that they do pay dividends. Pinterest can be used advantageously like any other social media and I'm certainly open to exploring this platform further.