“Feel” Project Part 7: Colors, Making Cuts, Memes and Such

I started a slideshow on Google Slide and put some placeholder images and text for different layouts along with some notes and variations for designs and font choices. Can’t think of a good font. I may use my handwriting. BuzzFeed tells me it’s “stupid easy” to turn my own handwriting into a font. Calligraphr is the app to use.

Trying out some possible colors. I’m using this tool Cymbolism which “attempts to quantify the association between colors and words, making it simple for designers to choose the best colors for the desired emotional effect” to explore some colors that can work for this project. I like this tool because it allows people to vote for associations rather than relying on accepted wisdom.

The words I explored: amusing, authentic, creative, cute, ecletic, imagination, magic, mystical, personal, playful, and surprise. Two common top results among these were:

Fuchsia
#ff00ff

Yellow
#ffff00

Which is interesting because I was thinking of using a pink with regards to this project.

Here’s a recent meme expressing a similar idea I wrote about in Hool, my first published work of writing.

“Temporary tattoo”

Sweet glass machine
full of black curly borders, gorgeous designs
for only a quarter.
Reach into my pocket, change kept in knickers, only one dollar
for four tattoo stickers. Make my deposit and hear clink clink clink,
turn around the knob
to get ink and ink and ink. Bring up my collection,
so proud and happy.
They stick to my body like a tooth full of taffy.

Disappointment.
My arms feel too bare.
I must go back,
I need more things to wear.

Ten, twenty, thirty tattoos,
I suddenly grin.
I can’t wait
til these all cover my skin.
I start cackling
with my crazy amount.
I’m an old passport,
more stamps than I can count.
But the store closes
and decides to kick me out.

Cloaked by the darkness,
I sneak back inside.
Nobody will stop me
from covering my hide!
My hand breaks the glass
and the machine opens wide,
on my nose, toes, and eyes!
Red and blue sirens
pierce through the night.
I baptize myself
with a childish disguise.
Nothing can stop me now!
Until much to my surprise,
cuffs around my wrist,
a new temporary prize.

Here’s another meme, this one related to the idea of someone missing a feeling.

Here’s another meme showing someone missing a feeling, and this one was some synchronicity for me because I read about this case only two days prior and planned to include a link to an article about it in one of these posts. Some meme creator must’ve been on my wavelength.

And here’s an ad expressing a feeling and someone expressing a counter-feeling using their hand.

I haven’t produced any new raw material but I cut some material from the Google Docs. I deleted all the material I had for the following:

Feeling some type of way
It’s an abstract kind of feel
I feel like I feel
How I feel about how I feel
How do you feel? (I feel you)

I think my interest in this is moving beyond explicitly having “feel” phrases as all of the pieces. It’s proving to be too gimmicky and doesn’t have or inspire much gold. I also just don’t have any material for some of the titles I currently have set as the pieces. With this excess cut, I think I’m going to hone in on the glimmers I have.

This weekend I plan to explore some some unpublished writing I have that might fit with the project, look through my Evernote, try to get some more raw material to work with, as well as exploring the viability of doing this as a slideshow.

I don’t have or want a plot. I don’t have an overarching theme outside of feelings. I don’t have a world built for this. I don’t have a tone or style. It’s still very early. What do I want people to experience as they read this? What do I want to experience as I write this? Who am I writing this for? Why am I writing this? Do I want this to be 50/50 verbal/visual? Do I want more verbal or more visual? Is there any strong reason to do this? Should I give up on it? Do I need to quiet down the blog and step away from this for a while? What is it about this project? Where are the glimmers? Where’s the gold?

Tyler Fugazzie