This is a classic graphic design practice project. That's for a good reason - it makes you think at a certain pace, and in a bunch of directions.
The exercise starts by picking a few words to work with. Words that are common but convey complex ideas are most interesting to use. I chose:
From there, it's a free association exercise, writing ideas / things / concepts that the starting phrase makes you think of. It's fun to trace the path your mind takes. What I came up with is below.
After you get to about 20 words, draw an icon for each of them. The objective isn't to do a perfect job, but to sketch the first thing that comes to mind "pictionary" style.
From there, take the root word, and put it together with a few of the words you linked to it. For instance, "laughter" + "loud" = "loud laughter". Here are the combinations I created.
Take a couple of the standout choices, and refine them. I liked "bright idea" and "smelly weird".
Out of my two nominees, smelly weird was the most fun to me. I think an important callout is that only after doing a lot of messing around and sketching is it worth taking this kind of thing to a digital level. When you're in front of the screen, everything has plenty of white space and tends to look really good - sharp, perfect lines have a tendency to deceive the eye.