New ideas don't just appear. They are the result of conscious, or subconscious, connections being made by the creator. Someone took two or more disparate ideas and combined them to get an unexpected result. Concept artists use this strategy all the time. Need a cute dragon? Combine a dragon with something soft and fuzzy, maybe a peach or a puppy, and start illustrating.
There are tons of ways to begin this creative matchmaking process and I've made my a document to help you get started. Your idea will probably take on a life of its once the ideas start flowing but you're just looking for something to get the creative juices flowing. It's all about placing constraints upon your ideation and observing how each decision leads to powerful combinations.
Here's how it works: Write down the thing thing your designing (character, logo, UI, etc) then list the requirements of your project. What do you know about it already? Once these are listed move left to right through the document, listing as many items as you can for each column. Don't hold back ideas, go for volume. Once you have a long list make a selection in each column and draft a project description based on your selections.
Does this seem too dry to work? Aren't spreadsheets anathema to the creative process? Nonsense. This exercise is just putting onscreen, or on paper, whats already going through someone's head when they're doing concept development.
Remember, this is an idea generation tool. Try to make unexpected combinations! It doesn't try to answer all the questions about a project, its function is to make connections that produce unexpected results. It's a conversation starter and once you've output a project description you might try the exercise a second or third time to see how much the concept can change just by tweaking a couple variables.
I've created some examples in the document to demonstrate how the process works. The highlighted cells are decisions I made and all of these are combined into a statement describing the project. In the columns Adjectives, Additional Descriptors and Setting columns you'll discover interest results can be produced by selecting multiple options but don't go overboard. You'll see that selected more than three options actually starts to hinder the concept. Few creative constraints often produce the clearer ideas.