By “return”, it can be the action of returning, or whatever emotion that you associate with return. So it’s pretty wide, just throw anything you have in mind.
Please don’t ever analyse this. Instinctive answers are the most prefered.
‘get back’ (return that item to me), enter (on the keyboard), post (return to sender), visiting/travling (travel, I want to return to…) Boomerang (see pic) yo-yo, Shopping (returning an item) - poor quality, dislike, change of mind.
My first instinct was “return on investment”. What do I get after I put in? … And that connotation actually stayed there pretty long. Some of the secondary responses for me would be ‘returning’ as in returning something that was lost…
I am basically trying to find a way to illustrate the concept of “return”. It’s hard because there’s just very few things we do in our lifestyle that “return”. There’s plenty of examples for its opposite.
So I am thinking of 2 ways to do it.
Use something that people associate with “return”(Product sementics)
Invent something to become the icon of “return”.
Of course this is will be my job, but I am using this brainstorm to find clues to what it may be.
for an illustration i imagine a symbol variation of the recycling symbol that depicts an oldmachine sprouting flowers-seeds coming out of the flower and the seeds sprouting into a product.