A Look at Icebergs: Visual Organization for Creative Minds

Have you heard of Iceber.gs? It’s a new(ish) visual organization app, in the same vein as Pinterest or Dropmark, but targeted specifically towards creatives. To get right down to the million dollar the ques­tion: do we really need another visual organization app? I am already a user of both Pinterest and Dropmark, so I know I was skeptical about adding yet another visual collection app to my workflow. But after exploring Iceber.gs a bit for myself, I’ve discovered a couple of features that make it worth taking it for a spin.

As you can see in the screen­shots below, the inter­face is very cleanly designed. Collections are listed in the left side­bar, so you can quickly switch between groups.

You can easily upload images to your col­lec­tions with the Iceber .gs book­marklet. The utility sits compactly in the bot­tom left cor­ner of your screen, and gives you the tools to add images to any of your collections.

You’re also not only lim­ited to collecting images — videos, doc­u­ments and web­sites can all be added, and you can group resources within a col­lec­tion. Another feature of Iceber.gs is that you can cre­ate notes that are linked to each col­lec­tion. I’m con­stantly mak­ing notes about the projects I’m work­ing on, so this fits really well with my process, as I assume it will for many of you. I love that I can attach a note directly to a col­lec­tion and keep every­thing orga­nized in one place.

If you focus on one par­tic­u­lar image, you get a sim­ple view of the image along with a direct link to where it was orig­i­nally found, plus tools to share, down­load or delete. You also have the abil­ity to attach com­ments to each image, which is another plus.

Overall, I see Iceber.gs as being more of a tool for my design work, where I’m build­ing inspi­ra­tion gal­leries and mood boards for each project I’m work­ing on, in a private online space. This feels like the main difference between Iceber.gs and Pinterest, where although they now offer pri­vate boards, the social aspect of the app is pri­or­i­tized. For that rea­son I see myself con­tin­u­ing to use both apps for the fore­see­able future, just for dif­fer­ent purposes.

The folks at Iceber.gs are continually working on making improvements to the app, and they promise to soon introduce collaboration features, which will make it even better. If you haven’t yet tried the app, you can request an invite. Have any of you tried it out yet? What do you think?