5 principles to save time, money, and headaches (moodboarding)

Do you start a project and honestly wonder if it's even gonna work? Do you feel like you're burning through money, designs, revisions over and over again, only to realize at the end of the project you were never aligned to begin with? That's not a creativity problem, that's an alignment problem. And there's one step that fixes this. This one step saves time, money, and more importantly, a huge headache, and it's mood boarding. And in today's video, I wanna walk you through 5 principles I use on every project to turn ideas into execution, a message into a movement. For those of you guys that don't know what a mood board is, what I'm talking about is a visual mood board. I'll put a quick example right here. It's just a collection of images, tone, inspiration, ideas that we're trying to pull from to be able to create a common language. I don't think there's any real wrong way to mood board. Literally, it could be a notes app with a bunch of ideas. It could be an Instagram shared folder of the saves. It could be a Word doc. The list goes on and on. Just having some sort of a mood board is definitely going to help you. However you get done a mood board, just start. Number 1 is this: mood boarding sets the tone and the pace for the entire project. How you start something is very important. If you start in professionalism, that sets the tone for the entire process. There's a lot of designers out there, a lot of creatives, and you know what? they ask their clients? You've heard it. Trust me, bro. That's, that's their big pitch. Trust me. A client comes to them, they want to work on a book, they want to work on an edit, they want to work on a design. The pastor, the author, the business owner has a bunch of ideas. And what does the creative agency say? They say, trust me. If you actually have seen their work, seen their portfolio, sometimes it calls for it. But more often than not, it's because they don't have any clarity and they actually don't know where they're going. That's where mood boarding is so important because it helps you align with one another to be able to create a common vision. We've all heard the phrase, a picture is worth a thousand words. So what does 20, 50, heck, 100 images tell you? It tells a story, a world, a direction, a vibe. It sets the tone for your project. Mood boarding is one of those things that are definitely a non-negotiable for me. It's something I do on every single project that I work on. If a client approaches me saying that they already have an idea in mind, that's perfect. I normally wait until they send me 2, 3, half a dozen ideas on what they're trying to build, whether that's a merch line, A book, a music video, whatever the case may be. Getting those ideas from the client definitely helps me capture an idea of what they're trying to build. Someone once told me or called me a creative midwife, and I kind of looked at myself that way where it's your baby and my job is just to help give birth to your baby. So mood boarding is definitely one of those things that help set the pace and the tone From the very beginning. Number 2 is this: it helps eliminate most of the mistakes upfront. There's a famous saying that says, measure twice, cut once. This second principle of measuring twice and cutting once is one of the principles that I definitely live by. If you're a creative and you hate revisions, this is for you. And if you're a leader, a client, And you feel like you're not being heard, I think mood boarding helps eliminate that frustration from the very beginning because we know that success loves speed and mood boarding just helps. Like I said, measure twice, cut once, get to what the common vision is from the very beginning. It's going to help save on time, save on money, save on energy, save on revisions, and save on headache. And yeah, measure twice, cut once. Mood board, get the idea out there from the very beginning. Point number 3 is this, and this is probably one of my favorites. It's a principle that I kind of came up with in my own head. It's 1 1 7. Wait, what? 1 1 7. And the principle is about exponential collaboration. 1 1 2 in normal terms. I know that. You know that. But in collaboration, it's exponential. It's greater than the sum of its parts. I think that's what the term is. But yeah, I think when you're bringing 100% and I'm bringing 100% and God is partnered with us, it doesn't equal 2 or 3. It equals 7. It explodes. It's exponential. You don't even know what can possibly come out from a great collaboration. And that's part of the excitement. I don't know what's going to turn out and you don't know what's going to turn out. We definitely have our own visions in mind while we're moodboarding, but as we're collaborating, as we're commingling ideas, there's this partnership where these ideas kind of blossom into something else. There's been ideas where in the moodboarding— I don't think it's just limited to moodboarding. I think moodboarding helps the collaboration process in general. And even when I'm saying moodboarding, it's not just visual moodboards. I think you could kind of mood board and ideate systems, strategies, frameworks, courses, books, however that is, like that idea phase, that ideation phase is so important because like I said earlier about being a creative midwife, there's a baby that needs to be born and it's my job. It's our jobs as creatives to help the client push that idea into the world. And for me personally, I think it's one of my callings to be able to help people pull what they have inside of them into reality. And it's something I take very seriously, but I've learned throughout the years that it is so amazing. I have like one cool idea and they could have one cool idea. And I think when you really, really try partnering together and the Holy Spirit is involved, 1 1 7. It's exponential collaboration. The ideation, the mood boards, All that gets commingled and it explodes. I can't explain it. I just know that it works. And I hope that you try to collaborate and mood board together because I hope for you it could definitely explode into something brand new. Number 4 is tied very closely to number 3 about collaborating for exponential multiplication. But I also think collaborating mood boarding is very important because number 4, you're able to collaborate where the other person has buy-in. You could have 100,000 different ideas, but if it's only your ideas and the other person doesn't get involved, they're not going to have buy-in. They're not going to want to be bought into your vision. If me, I'm just forcing ideas down someone's throat, I'm not doing my job unless they totally ask me to take full control, which some people have and some people do. There's going to be some people that I've done mood boards with, They really don't understand. They look at it and they look like a deer in headlights. They have no clue why I'm showing them this cause and obey reference and these colors and this gradient. They're like, I just want to see my shirt, bro. And I totally get that. But that's not everyone. I normally do think that a lot of people have some sort of sense of where they want to go or what resonates with them and understanding their taste level. But some people don't. And that's totally fine. I normally find out that those people have never been through like a full like consultation like that. And that's totally fine with me. I'm glad and I'm honored to be the first person that kind of opened their eyes to this world because I know this is what works. You know, agencies for decades have been doing the full mood board briefs, copyright. This isn't something that I invented. This is something I'm discovering, to be honest with you. And I'm no end-all be-all. I'm still discovering new methods, new ways to mood board. There's, you know, apps like, I think like Cosmos and other things, things like Pinterest. There's a whole bunch of different ways, and maybe I'll talk about that in another video. Back to my point, it's about collaborating where both of you guys have buy-in. I know that when I work with the client and they have a couple ideas that I'm able to work off of or build off of, it makes it flow so much smoother because, you know, you took one of their ideas and it's not just you telling them what to do. They're able to kind of partner. It's their baby, it's their project. It's not for you get your creative ideas off and feel really cool and feel like you're the man or the woman that, you know, that you are Mr. and Mrs. Genius. It's not about that. It's literally about making the client happy, but more importantly, like hitting the goal. Like sometimes the goal is the goal and the metrics are just going to resonate one way. That's a whole different idea. I just definitely say making sure that You're using the client's ideas in your guys' mood board, but also if you're the client, making sure that you're allowing the professional to kind of lead the way a bit too. If you kind of hear that they have a tone of, oh, I'm not sure if that's gonna work or not. If they're just a hater, cool. But someone like me, I definitely like to guide my clients in a direction that I think is going to win. I've had some clients just even recently wanna You know, AI their face and be the model on the book. And that's great and all, but if it's not the best thing for the project, I definitely would steer them a whole different direction because there's a hundred different ways you can approach a project. It could be with just a font, it could be with an image, it could be, you know, with a word, with a design, with AI. However it is, we're gonna get there. And I think that's what the idea and the mood board phase is all about. The final principle is this. I always Build with the end in mind, and it's not just mood boarding visually. I'm mood boarding strategy, vision, execution. Like I said earlier, for me, mood boarding isn't just the visual mood boarding. I think of this as a framework to kind of mood board a vibe for the entire launch, a vibe for the merch line, a vibe for the book. Whether you're launching the four book series like I did with Richard here, or you're building a course, doing a music video, whatever it is. Mood boarding is the way that you're able to kind of start testing out the waters and start figuring out what that end goal will look like. The Bible says without vision, the people perish. And I've seen that play out in creative works time and time again. When you don't have a vision, you know, you're just going to keep on stumbling, doing revisions, making mistakes, wasting time, wasting money. Getting a big headache and burning out. And that's what we don't wanna do. We wanna be professionals. We wanna execute. We wanna have things run smoothly. Mood boarding is the very start to making sure you execute properly. The consultation and mood boarding are my very first steps on what I do on every single one of my projects. So if you're working on a project, whether that be a book, a course, a podcast, a tour, merch, music videos, whatever it is, I would love to be able to help you out. My name is Javier Torres and I have over 20 years of creative experience and I would love to help you execute on your goal, on your dream. If you want to do that, if you want to hear more, make sure to hit me up at javiertorresstudios.com and I would love to assist you on that. Thank you guys so much for watching this video. If you watch to the very end, I love you guys. God bless you guys. Let me know in the comments what you got from this video and if you want to see me talk about More about mood boarding in the future. Maybe some of the tools that I use, maybe some examples. I don't know. I'm just getting started. I'm committing to posting every single week for 2026, and we're just getting started. Thank you guys. I love you guys so much. Peace.