Vision Boards and Why You Should Make One
One of my favorite things to do is to sit with a cup of coffee and pin beautiful photos on Pinterest, saving them for future vision boards I'll create. If you have no clue what I'm talking about, a vision board is a collection of photos, arranged together that evokes a certain mood or serves as inspiration. There's so many options and so many reasons you should be making a vision board for yourself.
Here's just a few benefits of having a vision board:
INSPIRE
A vison board helps you to get really clear on how you want something to look and feel. Before I make anything, I like setting myself up with a vision board. It helps in showing which colors work well together, which fonts, themes, and so much more.
GUIDE
Once you've created a vison board it helps you stay focused when you're faced with decisions and choices. You can always refer back to it to make sure you're staying aligned with your vision.
COMMUNICATE
A vison board is a reflection of who you are. It's a way to tell your story in a very visual way. That's why I love it as a creative tool in The Lifestyle Designer series. Your vision board helps you to discover who it is you want to be and how you want to present yourself.
CREATIVE BLOCKS
I'm inherently a very visual person. I love studying color palettes, textures, and themes. When I'm feeling stuck in a creative block, I love turning to the process of creating a vision board to get me through it. It's generally something that's really easy to do. If you don't like designing a digital version you can always grab that stack of magazines, scissors, and a glue stick and get going. There's something incredibly inspring about a tangible board. While I'm a pen and paper planner, however, I'm a digital person when it comes to vison boards because I can create them so quickly and easily. Because I don't find myself exhausting over them, they easily get my creative juices flowing and before I know it I'm past the block that was stopping me from moving forward and I'm making progress on the project I'm working on.
HOW I MAKE A VISION BOARD
1. First things first, I've usually pinned new photos that inspire me.
2. Using my pins, I save a few photos. Mostly they're new photos that I've come across that inspire me and I can't get out of my head. I'm a very visual person so when I see something I like, It tends to stick with me.
3. Using Canva I upload the photos and start arranging them in a template until I arrive at a layout that I'm liking.
4. I save the board and refer to it as I need it.
MY BOARDS
LIFESTYLE
You can create multiple vision boards that each serve you in a different way. You may start with an overall vision board for your life, like we did in The Lifestyle Designer. In the photos below, I created my overall vision board which included some of my favorite colors, hair styles, clothes, materials, and artwork. I love this vision board so much, I've even made it my phone background so I'm exposed to it as often as possible. It's a great reminder of how I want my life to look.
Get the Lifestyle Designer in the shop to start making your own vision board!
BUSINESS
As a creative business, vision boards or mood boards are crucial to my designs. Not only do they help me to stay within my aesthetic and represent the brand of EO Edits, but they also guide me when I'm trying new things, feeling stuck, or seeking inspriation. On a monthly basis, I spend just a few minutes creating a fresh mood board.
The mood board below is what I made for March. A few things that I'm feeling this month:
Weathered dark woods
Beachy black and white photos
Abstract line art
Cozy textures & jewlery
Statement earrings
Magazines
Travel plans
I don't always share the vision boards I create as inspiration for my business. They're usually very personal and not such a linear thing. You wouldn't be able to look at each vision board and see the exact correlation to my designs. For instance, my husband and I are planning our honeymoon so i'm very inspired by beaches, travel photos, and a summer aeshetic. It's not to say these things will be seen directly in my designs, but they're inspiring to me nonetheless. If you'd like me to show you my monthly boards more often, let me know in the comments!
STYLE
Vision boards can be as detailed as you need them to be and are used to inspire so many things. You may have seen, if you follow me on Instagram (which you should by the way. Find me at @eoedits), I try to make a vision board for my outfits each week. Not only is it fun to make, but the outfit boards keep me accountable to the vision I want to portray, take the stress and overwhelm out of putting together outfits on the spot, and make sure my style is cohesive and put together.Using the board I created, I'll pull the items of clothing out of my closet and hang them on a clothing rack, organized and ready to go for the week. It takes all the guess work out of it!
A vision board, for me, is crucial to my style and that's why you'll find several spots to make your own vision boards in The Edited Wardrobe, coming out on March 22! I can't wait to see all of your amazing vision boards as well as share mine with you.
BEAUTY
I've even gone so far as to create a vison board for my hair, an area that I wanted to put more effort into. I chose 5 photos of hairstyles that I knew I could easily create throughout the week and I keep the board in my planner. It serves as inspiration but also encourages me to do more with my hair than just brush it each morning, and I'm genuinely happier because i'm actually enjoying doing my hair everyday.
A few other ideas for boards you could make:
Career
Home Decor/Rooms
Makeup
Family
Goals to achieve
Health & Fitness
Travel plans
Wishlist
What do you think of vision boards and the whole process of creating them? Do you use one regularly? If not, how do you get your creative juices flowing and move past creative blocks? If yes, are you a digital creator or a traditional creator that uses magazines, clippings, and glue?
-Emilee