- [Lecturer] What is deductive ideation?
Well, it's all about how you think.
And when it comes to designing visual graphics,
such as a logo to represent a business,
a product or a service,
we need to take our thinking and make it visual.
Saul Bass is one of the best logo designers
who has ever worked in our industry,
and he defined this when he said
"Design is thinking made visual."
Which made me think, how would I visually design a graphic
to represent thinking.
Well, you might deduce the idea of thinking
into these simple graphics.
It's now time to take everything you've learned and gathered
from discovery and strategy, and leverage it
by using the most powerful computer of all.
Your brain.
So let's take a look at a variety
of deductive ideation methods you can use.
There's many different ways you can let your brain explore
possible ideas and transform your creative process,
by letting it cleverly discover things.
One way is visual associations.
A visual that associates with the bottom line premise
of a company or their service.
Shape associations.
We all did this as a kid.
We'd look in the sky, see a cloud
and see it for what it's not.
So we can leverage that within the ideation process.
Cultural cues.
This could be local culture or international culture.
Literal approach.
Not everything needs to be symbolic.
You can use literal aspects of a context to derive a design.
Storytelling is a great way to figure out
how to deduce an idea.
Common characteristics to the topic or theme
you're working on.
Analogies.
These are a great way to communicate a concept.
Conceptual patterns.
Your mind wants to see patterns
so look for those conceptual components that tie together
and can be leveraged to create a graphic.
Metaphoric approach.
Metaphors are another way to visually tell a story.
Historical references are filled with
all kinds of general knowledge associations
that people know, and you can leverage those as well.
Color association.
Color has meaning.
So you can use color as a secondary way to imply meaning.
Or a thesaurus.
As I'm drawing out my ideas,
I tend to write down words and have a thesaurus open
so I can look at it, see what the definition is,
and then look up synonyms for additional words
that define the same thing,
and that leads to additional ideas.
All of these ideation methods through deductive ideation
can be leveraged and used by your brain.
And when that happens, it'll connect the dots
and that connection of dots and concepts
are going to lead to great ideas.
Deductive ideation is best done in the context
of thumbnail drawing.
Drawing improves cognition, and as you draw,
it'll bring to mind associations
and visual metaphors, et cetera,
you can use to work out logo concepts.
Let's take a look at some logo designs
and the deductive thinking behind them.
So this client was called Slickplan.
What is Slickplan about?
It's employees working together
to plan out and create a website,
specifically software called Slickplan
that allows employees to work together
and plan out and create a website.
So this brings together a lot of different concepts.
A unified plan of attack.
Multiple people kind of focusing in on one problem.
It's partnership, they're working together.
That made me think of the saying two are better than one.
That made me think of a seesaw,
sometimes this kind of mind mapping of ideas
is going to lead in a direction
that isn't necessarily the right direction.
When I thought of seesaws,
I thought it takes two people to have it,
but if you only have one, a seesaw isn't that fun.
But that's how your mind can go down paths.
I would have never thought of seesaw unless I did this.
Client wants an animal approach,
so I start thinking down that line.
And then that made me think of symbiotic relationship
within the animal kingdom.
What are they doing?
Well, it's two are better than one.
Two animals working together
to improve each other's existence,
and that's the concept I locked in
on one of the design directions we created
and we put this together.
That's how deductive ideation works.
It's all about thinking.
And specifically, if you're sketching as you're thinking,
it's going to supercharge your ideation efforts.
Here's another one.
The client, Our Story Tours.
What do they do?
They put on authentic African American tours,
showcasing black history in the U.S.
There's a rich base to draw from here,
you have the African American culture,
you have black heritage.
That made me think of the Adinkra symbols from West Africa,
which are really cool graphic petroglyphs of sorts.
This made me think of the American flag,
geography, and the style iconic and symbolic,
as I was thinking of the Adinkra symbols,
and that helped me form this concept that they love.
Let's take a look at another one.
The client here is Dairy West.
They represent the dairy farm industry in Idaho, in Utah.
So it's all about farms and cows.
What comes from a dairy farm?
Well, milk and cheese is made from milk.
I think of the name itself, Dairy West.
It's directional, west.
That made me think of a weather vane.
This is how your mind works.
It wants to make connections.
You think about west, the direction west,
that made me think of a weather vane
that is usually powered by the wind.
And I thought a weather vane,
I thought of shape association.
Well the name Dairy, I like the dot,
maybe I can do something with that, and the style iconic.
And I came up with one of these directions.
Let's take a look at the next one.
This client, CounterFlow AI,
AI stands for artificial intelligence.
They're a threat assessment technology
for company network infrastructure.
So as we started thinking about this one,
it's about security and technology.
That makes me think of surveillance.
They're monitoring a network
to make sure problems don't pop up.
The name of their brand is shadow meter,
and when I thought of shadow I think
that's kind of like what a spy does.
They stay in the shadows, they're sneaky.
They're monitoring.
And then the other part of the brand name, meter,
well meter's for monitoring.
In this case, monitoring analytics.
Color association.
When I think of a spy I think of black.
Style, simplified, iconic.
And we came up with this.
Let's take a look at another company.
This is 4-H.
They're a national science experiment,
4-H Eco Bot Challenge, that they put on every year.
So this is a branding for an event,
not necessarily a company, a product or a service.
And that happens at times.
This is just for an annual event.
It's only going to be used for one year,
but we get to brand it.
So considering all the attributes related
to this national event.
It's geared for youth, it's youth oriented.
It involves science and robotics, who doesn't like robots?
Robots are cool.
That makes me think, 'cause I'm looking at the name,
the National Science Experiment 4-H Eco Bot Challenge,
I'm thinking we might be able to do some shape association
with the robot arm.
Circuit boards represent technology,
so we could work some of that aesthetic into it.
The color association with green
actually goes well with science
and specifically circuit boards.
They tend to be a greenish color.
It just happens to be their brand color too.
And style, this is going to be a logo type.
We got a lot of type to work with here.
And using all of those,
you can see the shape association playing a part of this,
where the robot arm makes the O in ECO,
and then the shape association for bot
is reinforced by the arm
and then the other part of it is a nut there.
Like it's tightening it.
So this worked out really well
and worked good for their event.
The next client was the National Talk Radio Group,
and it was a campaign, specifically an ad campaign,
to protect freedom of speech on national talk radio.
So a lot of attributes that came up regarding this,
the first one is obvious.
Freedom of speech has to do with the first amendment.
That's part of the U.S. Constitution.
I started thinking about patriotism, U.S., and of course
the analogy of an eagle kind of came to mind.
And then I'm thinking about that, an eagle and freedom,
well they fly around.
I like that.
But what this is about is speaking,
and that made me think of shape association.
Maybe I can turn a speaking bubble into an eagle.
Color association.
This could be any color, blue or red.
Style, flat graphic.
And this is what we came up with.
Here's another one.
Sometimes the ideas I come up with for a client
aren't necessarily what they requested.
I like to push 'em a little bit.
This client was P&S Marine, they're based out of the U.K.
What they do is it's a canal boat cranage, maintenance,
repair, cleaning, and remodels of canal boats.
The canal boat system in the U.K.,
I had no idea there was that many waterways in the U.K.
A lot of people live on canal boats and that's their home.
So this service is providing the movement of those
out of water, onto land to fix 'em, maintain 'em,
repair 'em, clean 'em, or completely remodel 'em.
So P&S stands for port and stern,
so some of the attributes we thought of
as we're thinking and working out all of our ideas
for this client, were water-based clientele.
People who live and operate on the water.
I also thought of ducks like water,
and that's what gave me an idea
that I had never intended to do,
is that what about each boat technically has a boat captain.
Maybe we come up with a brand character that's a duck
and he's a boat captain.
And we'll call him Captain Quack.
Color association, green and red.
Those are the colors associated with port and stern
on a ship.
Style, single weight line.
So this is a good example of how I came up with an idea
in the midst of the creative process,
by sketching out and thinking through attributes.
Ultimately the client didn't like the idea,
but I was trying to push them to say look,
nobody in your industry has a great logo mark.
This would be very memorable.
And I'm actually going to touch on that in another movie.
So you never know where it's going to lead.
Let's take a look at another.
And this one, the example that is, is myself.
Meaning the client is just me
because I wanted a cool looking iconic samurai graphic
on a t-shirt.
I practice designing all the time because I enjoy doing it.
So this doesn't always have to be in context
of a client project.
You can do this on your own just to improve your skills.
That's why I'm showing you this.
I love Japanese culture.
I've always enjoyed samurais and the stories of Shoguns
and the whole warrior class system in the history of Japan.
Skills improve with use, so it's a good thing to do.
I'd rather create than watch TV.
I'm doing it because it's fun.
The style I want to be geometric, flat and iconic.
And I created what I consider one of my favorite designs
I've ever done.
I think this looks cool and yes,
I do have a t-shirt of it now.
So all you have to do is think.
How you think, as a designer,
will impact your concepts and logos
more than any other skillset.
Combined with drawing, it becomes a creative superpower.
So leverage deductive ideation
to help you isolate points of information
that lead to clever and unique logo designs.