Kontor: A Souped-Up Pinterest For place of work Design

Say you need to revamp your place of work. type “modern place of business” into Pinterest or Tumblr, and you can see a slew of inspiring spaces, but you won’t in finding a lot sensible data like product names and producers; perhaps if you’re lucky, the photographs will establish the architecture firm accountable. Kontor, which payments itself as “a visual community for workplace design,” seeks to bridge the hole.

“ahead of Kontor, there wasn’t a great way to seek out inspiring areas, to search out nice architects and designers, or to collaborate with designers with the aid of sharing photography with related information and sources,” says Mia Lewin, Kontor’s cofounder with Andy Parsons, Kevin Ryan, and Tom Melcher. “people had been making an attempt to use Google pictures search or Pinterest, however they in point of fact do not fit the desires of a serious design conversation.” Kontor launched today with over 60,000 pictures from 350 design and structure firms world wide. Like Pinterest, users can search in keeping with keywords, keep images to galleries, and follow other users of the website online. What units it aside is that the photographs are way more robust in their metadata. Hover over a photograph and, relying on how neatly it’s tagged, you can establish particular products and their manufacturers. for those who just like the product sufficient, that you would be able to click on on an outlink to the manufacturer’s website online.

Kontor’s in-home crew hand-picked the inaugural roster of designers featured on the site, but plans to open it up to more firms down the line. “We built the product to lend a hand professional designers and designers carry their imaginative and prescient,” Lewin says. Kontor also spearheaded the picture categorization, calling out data staffers to find more related to the general aesthetic of the space, the dominant architectural strikes, and practicalities like particular lighting fixtures or furnishings.

“the way folks look at projects and how they analysis are absolutely separate,” says William Hanley, Kontor’s editorial director. “There are blogs for merchandise and areas, and you’ve got product indexes, but there isn’t anything else that marries the economic design side to the architectural aspect. the tips tends to be offline. We’re making the connections between projects, products, and designers.”

while the startup is at present backed through $5 million in collection A funding from Venrock and seed-spherical investments from Kevin Ryan and Tom Melcher, Kontor ultimately plans to launch rate-primarily based premium products and services related to contextual promoting, lead era, and data analytics. for the time being, the site is free to use for all.

So the following time you’re feeling like ogling offices which can be approach cooler than yours, click on over to Kontor, and discover a clothier who can flip your dream workspace right into a reality.