DESIGN & VISUAL BRANDING

Designing community icons with ‘catchphrase’ ideating

How catchphrase expressions can lead to visual branding

Catchphrase expressions that inspired these community icons: A shared spark, active participation, and mutual support (icons from left to right).

A catchphrase is a memorable phrase or expression. It may become associated with an idea or a person.

Ideating is to freely imagine, sketch, write, or compose anything that comes to mind about a particular expression.

The other day, I attended a seminar on data presentation for urban planning. The catch-all term community was raised several times throughout the day as an important aspect of urban life.

But what does community mean and how can we visualize it to connote the shared experience of community?

How can we design community?

As designers, we serve communities. Communities of customers, citizens, and friends with similar interests. We need to ideate and find a golden thread that inspires our designs.

The ideation phase

In the seminar, we started to ideate what community means to all of us. We free-associated, blue-skied, ideated.

Ideating is a clever tool for designers. It opens up the room for imagination and creativity.