The first step I took in creating my symbols was brainstorming and exploring different ideas that I wanted to create a symbol for. For organization, I used a web-map to plot my topics on. I needed to choose an umbrella concept or idea that I could break down into 3 sub-concepts. I decided on using Travel as my main concept. I then had to decide what were 3 good sub-topics that related to Travel. When I think of travel I make associations with feet, roads, and discovery; and so I chose these 3 to break down further into a total of 9 sub-sub-topics. For feet, I associated steps, motion, and hiking. For road, I associated dead ends, Cardinal directions, and maps. And for discovery, I associated compass, ship, and eyes. For each set of 3 sub-sub-topics I drew one topic by hand, one by tracing, and one I turned into an abstract image.
The picture above are the topics I chose to trace.
Here are some abstractions of 3 of my topics.
After completing my abstractions, tracings, and hand drawings, I started to combine the various mediums into hybrid images. I took certain qualities and shapes from one subjects and spliced them into other subjects. I meshed up to 3 topics and mediums into a single hybrid image.
I continued to make iterations on the hybrid topics. I aimed for simplicity, but also for uniqueness and attractiveness. I started to envision these hybrid images as symbols. I thought about symbols I have seen and what qualities they had, and applied said qualities to my images.
I chose 3 of my favorite image combinations and made vector representations of them in Illustrator. Then I made iterations of the images. I made alternate versions of the images but kept the same components of the original image. I inverted colors, played with contrast, added shapes, removed shapes, played with anchor points, etc.
After making all my iterations, I chose my 3 favorite. The project was complete.