"testing the waters"

the veryest beginnings of my experimental type work for the semester as it appears to me at this moment.

my first step was to collect handwriting samples: i got most from my studiomates, but i had a few responses from a crowdsource offer using facebook. the prompt was for an anecdote of an experience of gratitude, and an alphabet, all in the volunteer's normal handwriting.

for this first step, i'm doing a basic analysis of what everyone's alphabets look like as compared to one another. these alphabets are theoretically through the lens of gratitude, but as i'll be gathering more emotions as i progress, it's not worth comparing that aspect yet.

for curiosity's sake, i initially just dumped all my samples together and multiplied the layers so that i could see everything at once. i think it's pretty beautiful on its own:

i adore handwriting. that is the only way i had the patience to harvest each sample's alphabet, letter by letter, and compile them into this next composition, in an attempt to distinguish the most critical, immutable aspects of letters, vs the letters that experience dramatic differences between different hands.

a person with more forethought would have arranged all the letters on top of someone's alphabet that was really nicely kerned. i am not this person, and to be fair, i didn't come across any good kerning until i was almost done clipping and spacing letters on this endearing mess, in my second to last sample or so. (way to go jessica rojas!)

my hypothesis at this point (and obviously i don't know how it will turn out, which is why i intend to test it) is that by asking people to perform a brief emotional writing exercise along with their alphabet (in the newest several, i was making sure they did their gratitude exercise BEFORE their alphabet), i will be able to notice a discernable difference in their handwriting based on their emotional state.

in this way, ideally, i could continue averaging people by emotion until i could construct typefaces for each emotion that were constructed out of a collection of people writing how they do when they feel that way.

whether the difference is noticeable enough to make that work, however, remains to be seen.

i think i can now consider my feet wet from this process.