How you can use First Principle thinking in design

I just finished designing a logo in 3 days and here’s my secret:

First Principle thinking.

First I heard of First Principle thinking was from Elon Musk, this is what he uses to solve complex problems by acquiring knowledge about a thing by knowing its first causes.

It’s about questioning all assumptions.

Employing first principle thinking means distilling the problem into its most fundamental truths.

The core of the problem is this: My client needs a logo to represent her practice.

I proceed to ask these questions I dive deeper:

1. What is the most important component of a brand? — I’m working on a tight deadline so I ask this question because I want to know where do I focus most of my energy in and the answer that I arrive at is the emotion.

2. What emotion do we convey? — Starting with the emotion solves a lot of problems. Emotions are the basis of all my work. Emotion dictate the color scheme, the typeface and how the mark will be drawn.

3. How can we make the mark stand out? — Last question is how we can make our logo unique, Making the mark distinct is where things get messy. This is the most gruelling part of the job but it’s also the most fun.

Final Thoughts

I never thought I’d be able to employ first principles thinking in solving something visual, but as it turns out, questioning assumptions, breaking things down gives clarity.

This post was created with Typeshare