In This Article
Our comprehensive guide to bulletin boards is full of ideas and practical tips to make boards that will look great anywhere, from your school to your office or even a community center.
For two years, the corkboard outside Marcus’s break room held exactly three things: a flyer for a holiday party that had already happened, a takeout menu for a restaurant that had since closed and a fire evacuation map. Nobody looked at it. Then one Monday, someone cleared it off and pinned up a whiteboard grid titled “Cats vs. Dogs,” with a cup of magnets hanging from a string.
By lunch, the whole floor had voted. By Wednesday, two people who’d never spoken were debating whether a fish counts as a pet.
That’s the strange power of a good bulletin board: a few square feet of cork can do what a dozen “let’s connect more as a team” emails can’t. This guide covers how to build one worth stopping for: the etiquette, the science behind why it works and 41 ideas you can steal outright.
Why Bother With a Corkboard in the Digital Age?
Fair question. Your team already has Slack, Teams and an intranet nobody reads. Why would pieces of paper on a wall work any better?
Because your environment shapes your work more than you’d guess. In a well-known series of experiments, psychologists compared people working in “lean” offices (bare desk, no decoration) with people working in spaces enriched with plants and art. The enriched group was 17% more productive1, and when people got to design the space themselves, productivity jumped 32% over the bare-office group2.
Read that second number again. The biggest gains didn’t come from decoration itself. They came from involvement: people shaping their own space. A bulletin board is one of the cheapest ways to hand your team that kind of ownership.
A physical board also does something no app can: it creates collisions. Two people standing at the same wall, reading the same riddle, have a reason to talk. In an era when so much workplace communication happens through screens, a shared physical spot quietly manufactures the small, face-to-face moments that friendships at work are built from.
Pro Tip: The research points to a rule worth tattooing on your project plan: build the board with your team, and rotate who curates it each month. The involvement is where the magic lives.
And no, bulletin boards aren’t only a school thing. Community colleges, hospitals, cafes, co-working spaces, offices, anywhere people gather, a well-run board earns its wall space. The ideas below are written for workplaces, but nearly all of them adapt anywhere.
Proper Bulletin Board Etiquette (and mistakes to avoid!)
If you’ve ever seen a bulletin board packed with out-of-date leaflets pinned to it, you know how to do a bulletin board wrong. The biggest mistake when making a board is for it to get cluttered. You want to make sure your board has a focus.
We recommend choosing just three sections. These can be three panels or three large squares placed along the diagonal (see our example below), or any other way that suits you. You don’t want your audience to be overwhelmed, so avoid putting up too much, especially anything with small text.
Ideally, you want to be able to read almost everything on the bulletin board while standing at least two meters back from it. It’s also important both the creator of the board, and the rest of the team, follow a few pieces of etiquette:
- Be mindful of food and drink around the board
- Don’t write directly on the board
- Regularly add new things to your board and remember to take down anything that isn’t relevant anymore, your team will stop paying attention to it if they know the information is usually out of date
- Advise that your team don’t block the board with other objects
- Listen to the feedback from your team and make changes if you find there are areas they do not feel helpful
- Spend 10 minutes every week maintaining your board
- Be careful of the placement of your board: don’t block fire exits and be mindful of high traffic areas where your board could get in the way
Action Step: Put a recurring 10-minute “board refresh” block on your calendar right now, same day every week. A stale board is worse than no board: one expired flyer tells your team the whole wall is safe to ignore.
3 Main Bulletin Board Categories: Which is Yours?
There are three main types of bulletin boards: informative, interactive, and decorative.
- Informative Boards
An informative board mainly focuses on providing information to the audience. Examples of informative boards could be ones displaying information on health or fitness or giving advice for the camping season. The key to making a great informative board is making sure the text is easily readable, that each bit of information is valuable to the reader, and that it includes some hard facts (which might be in the form of graphs or infographics). This will make sure that your board has really served its purpose of providing information.
- Interactive Boards
These are often a team’s favorite board because they are engaging. An interactive board has many purposes, but at its core, they are designed for interaction between the board and the audience. This might be by using magnets to move items around the board or writing things on it. Our ballot board idea further down is the perfect example of an interactive board. You want to make sure that your interactive board has plenty of opportunities for everyone to get involved.
- Decorative Boards
These have the simple purpose of just looking aesthetic. Check out our winter bulletin board ideas at the bottom of this article for some examples. Usually colorful and themed around a festival or a time of year, these boards serve the purpose of brightening up the space. If your board is mostly a decorative board, you know you don’t need to worry about making it engaging or informative - you just need to work on making it look fantastic.
Though these categories have some overlap, almost every board sits in one of these categories.
Before you start creating your bulletin board, make sure you have an idea of which category yours falls under. This will keep you on track and make sure your board has the impact intended.
Once you have figured out your intention with the board, you can make it (that’s the fun bit).
How to Make a Bulletin Board
Long gone are the days when bulletin boards just meant a dull corkboard in the corner of an office gathering dust.
Bulletin boards can be made from almost anything: use this to your advantage by making your bulletin board as unique as your place of work. For example, maybe you run a clothing company or a laundry company: why not make your bulletin board out of some plywood, with rows of brown string, using wooden pegs to hold each section?
If you run a tutoring company, you could use a blackboard as a background, wrap a corkboard in color fabric for a sewing company, or fashion brass pipe into a frame for a plumbing company.
Or maybe you own a mechanics garage, so a sheet of metal and magnets would better reflect your business.
The creativity options are endless!
All you need is something for the background and a way of attaching pieces of paper, like posters, leaflets, and notes, to the board.
Step One: Brainstorm Ideas
Grab a piece of paper and some trusted colleagues for a consult, and write down all of the ideas you have for a bulletin board. You can use this time to establish the basics: where will your board go, how often you will maintain it, and who will be responsible.
Step Two: Establish a Gap and Identify Your Aims
Think about your team. Is there a gap somewhere? Perhaps you have recently had a divisive topic split the team, and you could do with some team bonding, or maybe your morale is a little low, and everyone could do with something to lift their spirits. Using your brainstormed ideas from the first step, find out what you would like to fix and how your board can tie into this. This is also a good time to establish what type of board you are building and use this to guide your creation.
Step Three: Sketch a Design
Draw a rough sketch of how you would like to design your board and start collecting materials. This will mean you have an idea of how you are going to execute your plan, and it will make sure you have everything you need. There is nothing more frustrating than getting halfway through your project to realize you are missing some of the key bits you need.
Step Four: Personalization
Once you have designed how you are going to make your physical bulletin board, you get to personalize it! This is the fun bit.
- Get some decorative push pins, shaped like flowers, bees, or little flags
- Sort out some basics like construction paper, tape, felt tip pens, acrylic paint, envelopes, sticky notes, and paper decorations
- Use a free tool like Canva to design titles and subtitles in colors and fonts that match your company logo (it’s worth saving your templates so you can reuse your designs)
- For small teams you could set up a permanent corner of the bulletin board with polaroid photos taken of your team with their names/role/an interesting fact about them, to introduce them to new team members and office visitors
- Use different arts and crafts material like decorative tape to make a bulletin board border
- Consider the location of your board: will it be acting as a welcome for visitors or will it be ‘behind the scenes’ for the eyes of your team only?
- Use scrap pieces of wrapping paper/wallpaper for backgrounds or to cut out letters
- Take note of national days (like the 4th of July) or world days (such as International Women’s Day), or other annual days relevant to your work as an excuse to jazz up the bulletin board.
Step Five: Crunch Time!
Time to get to making your bulletin board!
41 Bulletin Board Ideas That’ll Get Noticed
Some of these ideas you can use as an entire bulletin board, but others you may want to use as a section. If you use them as sections, think about mixing and matching similar themes, like wildlife, oceans, and Earth could make for an aesthetic spring bulletin board idea.
Interactive and Collaborative Bulletin Boards
These interactive bulletin boards are designed to bring your team together and bring some joy into your work day.
1. The Ballot Board
The ballot board is all about voting and is a fun way to get to know your teammates better.
To make this board, it is easiest if you use a large whiteboard and magnetic disks. Divide it into two or more sections, with different options written at the top. Some examples could be:
- Cats vs. dogs,
- Beach vacation vs. city trip
- Marvel vs. DC
- Night out vs. night in
- Cake vs. pie
- Pirates vs. ninjas
- Early bird vs. night owl
If your team seems engaged with this bulletin board, consider running a different question every day.
You could even use this bulletin board idea to vote on more important decisions, such as what direction the team moves with their latest project, or where the annual work party should be held this year.
However you use it, try to avoid anything too personal or too political and keep the topics light and entertaining.
2. Recipe Roundup
This idea is great for the foodies, and you can link it with a health section if you want to get your team into healthy eating.
Design the background and border of this bulletin board around the theme of food. Using a colorful background, add photos and cutouts of different fruit, vegetables, and dishes from around the world.
Use the main body of the board to display a title: ‘Recipe Roundup’ or ‘Recipe Exchange’, for example. Then a small explainer telling your audience they can leave a recipe and take a recipe. You could start off your board with a few recipes of your own.
It is a good idea to leave an envelope of scrap paper pinned to the bottom so people can write out their own recipes, but encourage people to print recipes too.
3. Collaborative Artwork
This board is a bit unusual, but can work great to promote teamwork, sharing ideas, and being creative, and it also means very little input from the creator. All you need to do is provide the materials, and a starting point, and see where your collaborative artwork takes you. Maybe you start by painting the outline of a mountain, and then leave a selection of felt tip pens, paints, and brushes, for your colleagues.
Or go a bit more abstract: paint a small colored shape in the middle of the board. Remember to leave instructions for your team that they are free to join in with the art piece.
4. Your Travel Adventures
The background for this bulletin board idea will just be a world map. Either draw this yourself, if you are particularly good at drawing, or go online to find an outline. Ask your colleagues to bring in photos of their travels and provide push pins for them to attach their images to the map.
This is a great way of bringing your team together to reflect on some of their favorite memories.
Start off your board with small photographs and maybe even souvenirs if your teammates are willing to add them.
Team-Building Bulletin Board Ideas
The following ideas work great stand-alone but even better as sections of a larger bulletin board. Experiment with different features and see which your team finds most engaging.
5. Community Connections
Best for a section of a board or as a complete board in the middle of summer when days are packed with different events, this bulletin board is designed to highlight local events and resources in the surrounding community.
This can include information about volunteer opportunities, new cafes opening nearby, sports days, street fairs, school plays, and the list goes on and on. The fun part about this board is you really have complete creative freedom when it comes to how you piece it together.
Go wild on colorful acrylic paint in the background, or just leave it plain, this board is purely about sharing information and bringing people together and doesn’t need much more than just a little bit of community spirit.
6. Brain Teasers
Here’s a riddle for you: A cat cannot fit through the green glass door, but a kitten can. You can take carrots with you through the green glass door, but not onions.
What else can you take through the green glass door? If you’re stumped, maybe it is time to exercise your team’s skills in logic and reason. Lateral thinking games can work great for this, but there are more simple math and English brain teasers. A good starter is dingbats: visual word clues.
This bulletin board idea works well as a section as it can encourage a bit of healthy competition among your team, as well as keep them engaged with the board in general.
There isn’t too much that needs to be done to make this sort of board or board section engaging, but if you want to make it colorful consider making question marks out of different materials for the background.
(The answer to the green glass door riddle is only words with a double letter that can go through the green glass door…)
7. Selfie Station
Set up a corner of your board as a photo backdrop, hang a basket of silly props next to it (oversized sunglasses, party hats, a “First Day Feeling” speech-bubble sign) and invite teammates to snap a photo and pin the printed result to the board. An instant camera makes this effortless, but a phone plus the office printer works fine.
Try to link your props to your board’s theme. For example, if the props are vacation themed, make the background a beach. The board fills itself over time, and new hires get a wall of friendly faces on day one.
8. Pet of the Month
This board will feature pictures and stories of your team’s pets. Ask everyone to email you some of their favorite photos of their animal companions a few days in advance so you can print them.
This board gives everyone a way to share about their beloved furry friends. And who wouldn’t want a bulletin board filled with photos of cute animals?
This board is just fun: it serves no other purpose than a bit of team bonding and some laughter, which is needed in all of our lives.
Health and Wellness Bulletin Board Ideas
These ideas will encourage your team to think about their wellness; after all, a healthy team is a happy team, and a happy team is a productive team3.
9. Mindful Moments
This bulletin board fosters a culture of mindfulness and self-care by providing tips, ideas, and resources. For this board, you could have one big mindfulness quote in the center (check out this list here if you need some inspiration) and cover the border with different mindfulness activities or resources for people to take.
You can get really creative for the border of a mindfulness-moments-themed board: you could use leaf-shaped sticky notes or pin up ‘mystery mindfulness’ envelopes.
10. World Kindness Day
Another bulletin board that is great to tie in with an internationally recognized day (World Kindness Day on the 13th of November), this board can be really bright and colorful as well as interactive.
If you are stuck on how to start it off, why not center a large heart or a “kindness counter”? From there, invite people to pin up small acts of kindness they have seen around the office: the coworker who covered a shift, the person who always refills the coffee. Watching the board fill up is the whole point.
11. Self-Care Board
This idea works nicely for school bulletin boards as well as in an office. Anywhere there are people, there are people who need self-care. Get a few different colored envelopes (an even number works best, 6 or 8, but up to 10 or 12 would work if your board is big enough).
On each envelope, write a different category, and inside fill it with ideas for self-care. If you have a budget, you could give your teammates a little gift with each idea.
For example, you could do the categories as:
Physical well-being: a day pass at a local gym
Emotional well-being: a guided journal or a favorite feel-good book
Social connections and relationship well-being: a voucher for two coffees at a local coffee shop
Spiritual or religious well-being: a yoga or meditation class
12. The Great Outdoors
A nature-themed bulletin board that highlights nearby hiking camping spots, as well as hiking trails and other outdoor activities, this board encourages your team to get outside and enjoy it. Research4 links time in nature to real benefits for both mental and physical well-being.
If you’re particularly artsy this is really your time to shine as you decorate your backdrop with an outdoors theme: towering trees made from felt, blue lakes with crumpled crepe paper, and clouds made from cotton wool.
Camping brings back so many nostalgic memories for people, so why not really let your inner child get involved with this one?
Once you’ve designed your background, you will want to make sure that you’ve posted outdoor information. Check Find a Campground for a site near you, and make sure you leave some space to put some information on how to prevent forest fires.
13. Take What You Need
For this simple bulletin board idea, all you need is colored sticky notes. Each color will be a different theme. For example, blue for pick me up, pink for life advice, and yellow for motivation. According to this color code, write a mantra for the day. The idea is that each of your teammates can take what they need for a bit of uplifting spirit throughout the day.
Remember to make sure to display your color-coded system somewhere on the board or use labeled color envelopes.
Motivational and Inspirational Bulletin Board Ideas
If you’re looking for bulletin board ideas to keep your team focused with their eye on the prize at all times, these ideas are the ones for you.
14. Goal-Setting Board
If you are looking for something that acts as a huge motivator for your team, consider a goal-setting board to really engage everyone into a growth mindset.
These act as a team vision board: a shared place you can put your goals. These can be work-related or more personal such as health goals or holiday goals. The key bit here is encouraging your team to add to the board.
It doesn’t have to be words. A goal-setting board of just images can be equally powerful. You could theme this board ‘New Year’ if you would like your team to start off the new year with an extra boost of motivation, or if you are a teacher you might want to use this at the beginning of the school year.
15. Words of Wisdom
Fun and easy to put together, this board features inspiring quotes from different people. From Maya Angelou’s “Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud” to Helen Keller’s “Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement,” there are so many great inspirational quotes to choose from.
To make this board, set a plain background, and use acrylic paint or cut-out felt letters to make the letters of the quotes. You can use the space around the quote themed around the person credited.
16. STEM Spotlight
This board features science, technology, engineering, and math topics and showcases people working in those fields. If you are a team working in this area, this board will look particularly great in your office. Divide your board into three sections: innovations on the horizon, famous people in STEM, and ideas for how your team can get involved.
Look into the idea of citizen science: this is the practice of public participation of large-scale studies that everyone can contribute to. There are plenty of free ways online that your team can contribute to real scientific studies, and showcasing these opportunities could be valuable.
17. Fitness Challenge
For this board, you will need to collect lots of different fitness challenges and set a different one, either daily or weekly. The main design of the board doesn’t have to be particularly colorful. Just make sure that the information is clearly displayed and engaging enough that your team is interested. Some ideas of fitness challenges could be:
- Who can hold the longest plank
- First team member to run 5K over their lunch breaks
- Most number of crunches
- Beginners couch to 5K (for the non-runners)
- Most number of pushups
- 7-day 10-minute yoga challenge (you could even host the yoga sessions in your office)
- Start a new sport challenge
Learning and Growth Bulletin Board Ideas
After you have inspired your team, you want to get in some ways that they can contribute to their own lifelong learning and growth. These next bulletin board ideas will do just that.
18. Podcast Club
A modern twist on a book club, the podcast club bulletin board encourages everyone to share their favorite podcasts. From fiction to non-fiction, politics to comedy, spooky to informative, there are now around 150 million5 podcast episodes out there.
The background of this board doesn’t need to be complicated: just a plain background, a title, and sticky notes or pieces of paper so everyone can write down a podcast recommendation.
19. Infographics
This board idea is brilliant if executed properly. The trick here is to make sure the infographics are printed to a high quality and that all of them are interesting, engaging, and colorful. Have a look at Creative Bloq’s list of interesting infographics to get started.
20. Movie / Book of the Month
You want this board section to feature different movie recommendations or book recommendations each month. There are a few ways you can organize this: either get people to email you nominations on the last day of every month, use the Ballot Board to get people voting, or just use your own recommendations.
Whichever you think is best, you want the board to be striking, with themed images surrounding each teammate’s favorite book or movie.
21. Trivia Time
Divide the teams in your office or classes in your school. This board encourages some healthy competition and encourages everyone to learn new things. Encourage everyone to submit their own questions to keep the board going strong, and award prizes to those who answer correctly. You can use the same layout as you did for the Words of Wisdom board.
22. Word of the Day / Word of the Week
Everyone could benefit from growing their vocabulary; no matter your age, there’s always a new word worth learning. The idea of this board is simple.
Choose a word for each day of the week (or a word for each week of the month) and display it with its definition. This is a quick and easy bulletin board idea and just involves a bit of printing. There are lots of interesting words you could start off with listed here.
(Indubitably, this idea will delight your colleagues in mirthful camaraderie. See? Fancy words are fun.)
23. World Language Bulletin Board
Hola, bonjour, nǐ hǎo, hujambo, marhaba: do you have a diverse team who all speak different languages? Then this is the bulletin board idea for you. Use this board as an opportunity to showcase your team’s language skills. The background of your bulletin board can be a phrase translated into as many different languages as you can (try the Rosetta Stone’s list of ways to say ‘good morning’).
Once you have made the background, you can add more information to the forefront. Perhaps you would like to add some facts about different languages (did you know that Iceland has a committee dedicated to approving or denying new Icelandic words?)
You could leave a stack of sticky notes next to the bulletin board and encourage team members to add a motivational quote or greeting in their native language. You could tie this board in with International Mother Language Day on February 21st.
For inspiration, look for school and workplace examples online: the ones that work best tend to use bold colors on a dark background so the information stands out without feeling overwhelming.
Funny and Unique Bulletin Board Ideas
If your office needs a break from the deeper topics, try out some of our funny and unique bulletin board ideas. These ideas are more light-hearted and are designed to give your team a morale boost.
24. Throwback Thursday
A popular social media hashtag, throwback Thursday would work as a modern bulletin board idea. This board features old photos and memorabilia from the past few decades. You can ask your team to bring in some of the items they have collected.
This can be a particularly fun board if your company is an older company with teammates who have worked there for a long time. Maybe some of your team can find a photo from their first day at work 20 years ago.
25. Friday Funnies
For no other reason than it is really good for you to laugh, this Friday Funnies board is just to give the office a little boost before the weekend.
Ask everyone to bring in something everyone else will find funny: a comic strip cut out from a newspaper, their favorite joke written on a sticky note, or a funny story they can pin to the board.
Keep everything else simple when designing this board so everyone can focus on the content.
26. Old School Tech
Floppy disks, cassette tapes, Game Boys: our first experience of technology seems a lifetime ago. In this bulletin board, you take a trip down memory lane. Decorate the board with images and provide trivia and fun facts.
This is extra fun if you have Gen Z teammates: try explaining to your younger colleagues about the times you would hear a parent shout out, “Please get off the internet, I need to use the phone.”
(If you’re looking for an excuse to create this board, National Technology Day is on January 6th).
27. Guess the Baby
If you’ve done a lot of educational or informative bulletin boards, why not break it up with something just fun? For this bulletin board, you will need to ask everyone for a photo of themselves as a baby.
After printing a copy of each of them, print everyone’s names. Then display all of the photos on the board, and pin the names in a pile in the corner. Let your team spend a couple of days figuring out who is who (without anyone giving away which photo is their one).
This one is more fun if you can convince CEOs and senior leadership to dig out some more embarrassing photos!
Pro Tip: Give each photo its own paper “frame” in a different style: ornate gold for one, crayon-scribble for another. It makes the board look intentional instead of like a pile of printouts.
28. Wall of Memes
This meme wall does just as it says on the tin. All you need to get started is your favorite memes and ask everyone else to print theirs.
If you want to do something a bit extra for this board, dig into the history of memes by asking everyone to bring in a copy of the first ever meme they saw on the internet.
Positive and Impactful Bulletin Board Ideas
29. Global Citizen Bulletin Board
You can choose to use this bulletin board to celebrate International Volunteer Day or ‘just because.’ Either way, it should have the same strong message: our team is part of a global community, and we work to make the world a better place.
This board can be divided up into three sections: local volunteering opportunities, showcasing people in our team who already volunteer, and photographs/inspiration of larger volunteer efforts.
You could also arrange for your team to take an afternoon off work and head out to volunteer together. Soup kitchens, animal shelters, and hospices are always looking for volunteers.
30. Positive News Articles
An easy board with a cheerful message, this bulletin board is all about spreading the good news. Check out Positive News and BBC’s Uplifting Stories to get started, and save some of your favorite stories. Print them out on good quality paper or thin card and display them on your board. That’s all you need to do to make a big difference to the spirit and morale of your team.
31. Random Acts of Kindness
For this idea, you just need a big stack of sticky notes. If you would like the board to look aesthetic, you could choose to get pastel-colored or rainbow-colored notes. On the underside of each sticky note, write a random act of kindness. For example:
- Buy your next-door neighbor some flowers
- Check in on a friend who is struggling
- Offer to run an errand for a colleague
- Cook dinner for your household tonight
Encourage your team to all take one or more of the notes and carry out their random act of kindness before passing their card along to the next person.
32. Trade Swap
We all have our strengths and our weaknesses. Maybe you are fantastic at DIY but awful at art, or maybe baking bread is your biggest passion but you have never mastered the art of making sweet treats. This board is simple and easy to make.
Either make a simple background or just leave your board blank (apart from a title and some instructions). Ask teammates to leave sticky notes with one side asking for something they need and the other side describing what they can offer in return. For example, ‘I need help to mow my lawn, and I can trade for some plumbing work’.
This fun bit of team bonding is practically helpful and will foster a sense of community within the workplace.
33. Recognition Board
Show your teammates how much you appreciate them and their contributions by creating a recognition board. This board can be decorated with success and thanks-themed decorations (think gold stars, red hearts, etc.) and use this board to acknowledge colleagues’ milestones, achievements, and exceptional performances. You can include photographs and congratulatory messages to add to the display.
Seasonal and Holiday-Themed Bulletin Board Ideas
Finally, if you are looking for seasonal and holiday-themed bulletin board ideas, these ideas will keep your classroom or office looking festive.
34. Spring Cleaning
Sometimes, a fresh start is all you need to feel motivated and ready to face the week. Our spring cleaning bulletin board idea features tips and tricks for cleaning and decluttering your home and workspace.
Outline your board with decorative images of cleaning brooms, brushes, and clothes. You could display the title of this board within a mind map bubble and encourage everyone to add their own ideas onto the ‘legs’ of the mind map.
35. April Showers Bring May Flowers
This board will be fun to make in a classroom, particularly with big colorful umbrellas, puddles, and rain boots.
You could also use quotes about the joys of springtime to decorate the board, with teammates having space in one section to share their favorite springtime activities.
36. Beach Vibes
When summer starts heading your way, it is time to bring out your most creative beach ideas to display on this board. Make a yellow sand beach and dazzling blue water with construction card, and decorate with different beach items.
If you want to add some authenticity to your beach, you could make some paper mache starfish or even add some real shells around the border to really bring out the beach vibes.
37. Stay Cool
Either as a stand-alone idea or part of a wider ‘beach vibes’ bulletin board, our staying cool bulletin board idea is aimed to help your teammates cope with the rising heat, especially if you live somewhere it gets really hot.
Remember to include pets in this one, too; it’s often our pets who struggle most in the heat and can often benefit from an ice pack to lay on or an ice cube to lick.
38. Autumn Harvest
Create a bulletin board featuring fall-themed decorations, such as pumpkins and leaves. Encourage employees to share their favorite fall recipes and seasonal activities.
You could theme this board around giving back to your community, too, by leaving a basket or trolley beneath your board with a sign asking for food donations. Find your local food bank for places you could donate the food.
39. Spooky Season
It’s time to get out your best Halloween decorations for spooky seasons. Cut-out ghost paperchains and jack-o-lanterns are easy, and a simple black-and-white or black-and-orange background will be suitably spooky.
You could run a few different sections, including one for teammates to share photos of themselves in Halloween costumes and another to share spooky ghost stories.
40. Cozy Winter Wonderland
For a winter bulletin board idea, why not create a cozy wonderland of fluffy snow and cozy little houses? If you want to keep it super easy, stick with cut-out 2D images. But if you are more creative and want a bit more of a challenge, you could use cardboard to make 3D houses.
Use rolls of cotton batting to create a blanket of snow over the roofs of your houses. You could even add a little ice-skating rink with scrunched-up plastic wrap for the ice.
Pro Tip: Consider adding battery-operated fairy lights around the border of your display to make it really cozy.
41. Holiday Cheer
The last bulletin board we will leave you with is a holiday cheer theme. Whether you and your team celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah or Shōgatsu or Kwanzaa or the winter solstice, put together a board including everyone.
Decorate the board with different images and facts about your teams’ festive traditions. This board will get better and better the more your team adds contributions, so make sure everyone feels welcome to be included.
Make Your Board Work for a Hybrid Team
Here’s the objection you might be sitting on: “Half my team is only in the office two days a week. Who’s going to see this thing?”
A hybrid schedule changes how you run a board; it doesn’t have to kill the idea. A few adjustments:
- Refresh the board on your anchor days. If most people overlap on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, time your weekly update for Monday afternoon so the fresh content greets the fullest office. A ballot board question posted Tuesday morning gets far more votes than one posted Friday.
- Give the board a digital shadow. Snap a photo after every refresh and drop it in a team channel. The remote crew stays in on the joke, and the photo doubles as an archive of the board’s greatest hits.
- Let remote teammates contribute. Pet of the Month photos, recipes, podcast picks and trivia questions all travel fine by email: assign an on-site buddy to print and pin them. If the remote half only ever watches the board, it becomes one more thing that divides the two groups.
- Save interactive boards for in-person moments. Guess the Baby, the Selfie Station and collaborative artwork make great anchor-day or offsite events. Advertise them a week ahead so people plan to be there.
Action Step: If your team is hybrid, decide two things before you buy a single push pin: which day the board refreshes, and who photographs it for the team channel. Those two habits keep one board working for both halves of your team.
Bulletin Board Takeaways
Remember Marcus’s sad corkboard with its expired party flyer? The distance between that and a board people detour to visit comes down to a few fundamentals:
- Plan before you pin. Pick your category (informative, interactive or decorative), pick your aim and sketch it out so the board keeps a clear focus your team can read at a glance.
- Build it with your team. The research is clear that involvement is where the productivity and morale gains come from, so rotate curators, invite contributions and let the board belong to everyone.
- Keep it alive. Ten minutes of maintenance a week, ruthless removal of anything out of date and a fresh question or feature often enough that people keep checking.
Start with one idea from this list (the ballot board is the easiest win) and watch what happens by Wednesday. You’ve got this!
Need more ideas on how to brighten up your office? Check out our article 65 Office Decor Ideas & Tips That’ll Make ANY Office Glow.
