Vision Boards
Cut, paste, and draw your way to a creative 2025
So you have your inspiration and you’ve set your goals, but do you feel like something is missing in your 2025 creative planning? How about a vision board?
What is a vision board anyway?
According to Psychology Today, a vision board is:
“…usually a collage of images that represent goals and dreams. It can include cut-out pictures from magazines and words that help inspire you to manifest your dreams and get where you want to go.”
Should I make one?
It’s completely up to you! I made mine because it’s fun and I like having all my goals and inspiration on a single sheet that I can refer to throughout the year. It can help you focus on your goals and serve as a reminder of what you want to achieve.
How to make one
First, think about what you want to have on your board, examine your goals, priorities, and values to guide you. Think about what matters to you and what you want your year ahead to look like. You can certainly dream but also be realistic on what you can achieve in 2025. Your goals could cover all aspects of your life or just your professional life. If you have a word for 2025 you could use that as your guide for the rest of the board.
Collage
There are lots of different ways to make your own vision board. The “traditional” way is to cut out pictures and words from magazines. This is a lot of fun to do with your kids—my daughters made their own boards too. We got a lot of our magazines from the local library where they have bins full of free and donated magazines.
Here’s my collaged vision board for 2025. I have some space left so I may add some more. Or maybe a little white space is something I need this year!
Illustrated
If you’re an artist you can illustrate your own board. The advantage to this is that you don’t need a stack of magazines and you can draw anything you like, unbound by what you can find in the pages. You can do this on paper or digitally with Procreate or similar.
Julia Rothman (via DrawTogether) makes an annual more/less vision board which I really love (I made my own last year in fact).
Digital
If you don’t want to draw and like the idea of collage but not the cutting and pasting part, you can make a digital collage instead. Canva has lots of templates you can use to construct your own vision for 2025.
If you’re a Pinterest user you could also set up a board for 2025 and make your vision board that way.
Words
I’m going to use Julia Rothman as an example again as she did a words only version of her more/less list that I love.
I made a board, now what?
If you have a physical board, pin it somewhere you can see it. If it’s digital, make it your phone wallpaper or print it out. However you made it, check it periodically and see where you may need to make adjustments to meet your goals.
If you make one, feel free to share links to your board in the comments, we’d love to see it!
Love vision boards! I've been making (and updating) mine since 2020; it's a linen-wrapped homasote board that I can pin things to and update on the fly (i.e., if I want to add something halfway through the year, I can easily rearrange), and it sits in the window well above my basement desk, so it's always in view. I never share pictures of it anywhere because it's too personal, but I do think it helps when I'm making tough decisions about how to spend my time. Good luck with yours this year, Christine (and everyone)!
I made vision board along with some other friends last year, but I think we were unfocused and half hearted in both the making and following up with our goals ahaha
I really love the more/less template, and I decided to go with it for this year, which I had shared in my recent post: https://erifaults.substack.com/p/good-things-6-12-january-2025-comic
Here's to us following up with our goals for the year 🙏