Layers of Feeling

I explored the idea that emotions cannot be measured or understood in the same way for everyone. One emotion can hold many different feelings depending on the person experiencing it.

For example, sadness can mean grief, loneliness, weakness or hurt. Each deserves to exist on its own rather than being reduced to one generic definition.

I used the words themselves as the starting point. Breaking down their letterforms into simple shapes allowed me to turn language into a set of repeating patterns.

The patterns became different visual expressions of each feeling, using density, spacing, scale and symmetry to create variation within the same emotional category.

Colour became part of the system, with each emotion assigned its own colour range and tonal variations.

I experimented with opacity and transparent paper, allowing colours and patterns to overlap without one completely taking over another. The final catalogue allows the viewer to physically combine the different feelings, creating an interactive visual representation of emotion as something layered and open to interpretation.