Cosmos: A cleaner way to moodboard for people who actually create
If you're tired of juggling Instagram saves and scattered Pinterest boards, Cosmos is the focused alternative that showed up in 2023 and caught fire. With a stripped-back interface and an algorithm trained on a seeded list of creatives, it climbed to the top of the App Store's Design category.
Creative teams at Nike, Apple, and Amazon now use it to pull over 10 million pieces of content each month from across the internet into organized collections. That traction helped the company raise a $15 million Series A led by Shine Capital, with Matrix Partners, GV, Accel, and Squarespace CEO Anthony Casalena participating.
Why it matters for creatives
- Less noise, better input: A feed tuned for visual quality and taste, not generic engagement.
- Clean credit: Automatic provenance helps you find the film, photographer, or original source behind the image.
- Faster curation: Pull from anywhere online and sort into collections without the usual platform shuffle.
Where Cosmos is heading
Cosmos started like Pinterest-save, sort, revisit. It's now on a path to become a home for creative portfolios, closer to how designers use Instagram or Behance.
On the business side, the company is exploring premium subscriptions and an upcoming e-commerce angle. Expect tighter loops between inspiration, showcasing, and buying.
AI: Use it with taste
Generative AI is both everywhere and polarizing. There's growing adoption inside creative workflows, but the broader audience has an ick response to the flood of AI slop.
Cosmos's stance is pragmatic: build a platform that champions artists, without drawing a hard line against AI images. The goal is to protect credit, surface quality, and support the people who make the culture-not drown them out.
How Cosmos uses AI right now
- Quality ranking: Machine learning models filter for imagery likely to resonate with visual professionals.
- Provenance detection: Systems scan the web to identify the original source-film stills, photographers, titles-and tag them automatically.
- Taste-based feeds: Your inputs refine what you see, trading generic virality for informed curation.
Practical playbook for your team
- Define your inputs: Set a theme per collection (palette, material, art direction). Commit to a weekly sourcing sprint.
- Standardize credit: Use provenance tags as a rule, and add missing credits before assets enter moodboards or decks.
- Set an AI policy: Decide where AI fits (ideation, variations, comps) and where it doesn't (final client-facing work, without clear disclosure).
- Measure signal: Track which collections influence briefs, comps, or sales. Keep what sparks outcomes; archive the rest.
What to watch next
- Portfolio tools: If Cosmos becomes a credible place to host work, you could cut the back-and-forth between inspiration and presentation.
- Commerce hooks: If buying connects to collections, expect faster reference-to-purchase cycles for materials, assets, or prints.
If you're sharpening AI skills for creative workflows and want resources that respect craft, explore curated options by role at Complete AI Training.
Bottom line: Cosmos is betting on curation, credit, and a clean interface. For creatives who value taste and source integrity, that combination saves time and keeps standards high while the rest of the internet chases trends.
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