An Illustrator exercise where I take random fonts or shapes and develop a series of wordmarks[/logos] for a brand.
I start with a word and morph it into something else; turning a series of squares into a legible wordmark, or a morphing a phrase in a certain typeface into another series of thematic shapes.
Creating new shapes and stylized fonts makes me think outside the bounds of normal typefaces and forces me to get extra creative with variations of the same phrase over and over again.