The pilot design problem in large-scale multi-input-multioutput orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) system is investigated from the perspective of compressed sensing (CS). According to the CS theory, the success probability of estimation is dependent on the mutual coherence of the reconstruction matrix. Specifically, the smaller the mutual coherence is, the higher the success probability is. Based on this conclusion, this paper proposes a pilot design algorithm based on alternating projection and obtains a nonorthogonal pilot pattern. Simulation results show that applying the proposed pattern gives the better performance compared to applying conventional orthogonal one in terms of normalized mean square error (NMSE) of the channel estimate. Moreover, the bit error rate (BER) performance of the large-scale MIMO-OFDM system is improved.