I'm no stranger to the practice of
tear-sheets,
mood boards,
sketchbooks and
vision boards. After all, as a
creative person it comes with the territory. At
Art School you document
ideas,
inspirations &
techniques constantly in
sketchbooks. As an
Interior Designer I would create
mood boards & room settings to get my ideas across to clients. As a
Stylist I reference
style ideas with
tear-sheets, & all of the lifestyle magazines I have worked for have walls full of
vision boards for their current issue. I guess they could be considered the
visual version of list making
- they serve as a
memory jogger, a
goal setter, a
'this is what I'm aiming for'
Without realising it you are probably familiar with them yourself, especially if you follow
design led blogs such as
Design*Sponge or
The City Sage. These blogs regularly visually round up a collection of images based on a theme (my all time fave is the
Living In posts on D*S. Pride and Prej inspired board pictured above). You may even have a pile of
tear-sheets yourself; things that have
sparked an interest, an
idea that you'd like to
refer back to at some point. Perhaps you are more reserved & simply fold over the corner of a page in a magazine. Either way, the principal is the same & it also translates into the digital world too. Do you
bookmark sites that you like? If you are anything like me you have about a gazillion pages bookmarked for later reference - not always an efficient filling system, but hey!
It is no surprise then, that you can now produce an all digital, fabulously professional looking,
vision board online. Hurrah for technology!
Olioboard comes recommended but I have yet had the chance to play around with it. Don't you worry though, I have ideas brewing for its uses!
So back to my earlier point of being familiar with this exercise when it comes to my creative process. It HAS proven
success. It helps reach the
intended goal. It
documents the idea. All good then. But until recently, I had never thought to
apply this tried & tested approach to ME!
I have, of late, been struggling to get to where I think I ought to be in terms of
achievement. I've been feeling
unfocused and a little (ok, a lot)
stuck in a rut. Less so in creative terms, but hugely in
Life terms. This has led to some
soul searching; some
questioning, and plenty of
research. (yay for the internet!)
I have been subscribing to the wise words of
Christine Kane (amongst others) via her
Be Creative Be Conscious Be Courageous blog as well as her
Live Creative e-zine, and she actively advocates the exercise of
producing a vision board to help you get to where you want to be. She is so
encouraging in this field that she has complied
articles & a free download to guide you through the process. I feel like I have taken a step in the
right direction - I feel that by dedicating a few hours to
ME and what I would like
MY FUTURE to be that I have begun the long
journey in getting there. Perhaps I'll share my vision with you in a later post. If I'm feeling brave enough!
Do you sometimes feel you have
lost your way? How do you
get back on track?
{image 1 by Emily Burlingame on Olioboard, image 2 by Amy Merrick for Design*Sponge, image 3 by Polly Rowan on Olioboard, image 4 from Christine Kane's Blog}
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