During the first phase of the ideation process, I felt very stuck. My last name is complicated since it’s divided into two parts. I decided to explore the different possibilities with my initials: AYB, AY, AB or AY-B. During this initial exploration, I didn’t feel like anything worked as I normally do logos with illustration involved and I generally love to combine illustration with design together in most of my work.

During the second phase, I went all out with ideas. I looked at my nicknames, what my name meant, doing things with my Persian name, and others. Eventually, I looked deep into my moodboards for inspiration. What do I like? What truly represents me and my work? I learned a lot of things about myself after I did my moodboards, and for this round I became more and more inspired after I kept referring back to them. I even started looking back at some of the projects that I had already done to get inspiration. I think this round was very successful because I tried not to limit myself to rules and guidelines, compared to my initial stage where I felt like I had to constantly do something with my initials. All in all, I would give myself a 10/10 (for the very first time I’m actually giving myself this mark!) because I went through a lot of frustration, exploration, and completely different techniques that I have never tried before. I surprised myself through this whole process and I was happy with the results that actually came out of it.