Courtesy of Cosmos
Before the age of social media, there were mood boards—physical compilations hanging on a wall, filled with cut-out images from magazines, photo albums, and other sources, to help pinpoint a feeling, a vision. Then came Pinterest in 2010, a revolutionized approach to the mood board concept for the internet. It quickly became a tool for homeowners and designers alike to bring home projects to life. Billions of pins and millions of users later, the introduction of ads and AI have removed some trust in the platform and other legacy social media applications. That’s where Cosmos comes in—a new, ad-free visual platform, informed by creatives, that harkens back to the early days of web-based mood boards.
The platform was founded by entrepreneur Andy McCune, who says the idea for Cosmos came out of “not feeling like there was a place on the internet that felt worthy of being the space where [his] ideas could come to life. “Everything felt too noisy, and the platforms creatives were relying on lacked the quality and the taste level I needed as a creative myself.”
McCune previously co-founded Unfold—a mobile app that provides users with templates to create engaging, curated, and aesthetically pleasing social media stories—which was eventually acquired by Squarespace. After leaving Squarespace, McCune returned to more personal work—designing spaces, building a furniture gallery, developing a hospitality concept—and felt the tools available didn’t reflect the high standards of people using them. So the idea of Cosmos was born.
[Related: 5 Ways Design Professionals Can Use AI]
Key Features of Cosmos
Andy McCune
McCune consulted architects, interior designers, and other creative professionals before launching the most recent version of Cosmos, which debuted in early April. Features for the platform came directly from those conversations, and the result is a product that provides space for creation with very few distractions.
Cosmos functionality will feel familiar to users. It’s possible to search by topics and keywords, and users can follow other users. Aesthetically pleasing, curated imagery populates the screen that is void of ads.
However, a few key differentiators of the platform include:
- Quality content: Instead of surfacing what’s already popular as many social media algorithms do, Cosmos seeds discovery with a curated community of creatives, and uses machine learning to de-rank low-quality content rather than reward it.
- AI used for clarity, not generation: Cosmos uses AI to research images—to clearly indicate who made the work, where it came from, what style or movement it belongs to. It does not use AI to generate content (something Pinterest has received backlash for recently), and users can filter AI-generated imagery out of their feed entirely.
- Search that serves designers: You can sort by color palette, style, period, or material. “If you want art deco interiors in a specific green, or Belgian minimalism in warm neutrals, Cosmos can get you there. It’s much closer to how designers actually think,” McCune says.
“Images move fast, lose their credit, and get surrounded by ads and AI slop. Visual culture had lost its center,” McCune says. “We want Cosmos to be where it lives, with context, with permanence, and with care.”
Built for Collaboration
McCune sees Cosmos as an exceptional tool for a homeowner to use when collaborating with their design team on a home project. “I used it when I was building my own house, inviting my architect and designer into shared collections so the references lived in one place with context,” he adds. “We’re building for that specifically, and it’s a great entry point for designers to pull clients into a more collaborative, visually rigorous process.”
According to McCune, creative teams at Nike, Chanel, A24, Apple, and On Running are already using Cosmos internally, and prominent studios like Jeremiah Brent, Woods + Dangaran, Yabu Pushelberg, and Athena Calderone are also on the platform. Some of these are the creatives he tapped for input when developing Cosmos, too.
It’s a platform for, according to McCune, “anyone who takes how they live and what surrounds them seriously,” but also is purposefully built for creative professionals: interior designers, architects, photographers, art directors, and stylists.
Read this next: Posting With Purpose: A Designer’s Guide to Social Media Strategy
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