Emotionaly Vague is a research project about the body and emotion asking: How do people feel anger, joy, fear, sadness and love? In order to answer this, a simple survey was developed, the results of which were compared and combined to reveal patterns of feeling. The research was conducted by a graphic designer Orlagh O’Brien in 2006/2007.

How do you ask a stranger (not necessarily fluent in English) to recall and describe their private emotions? Each survey used in this research contained five sheets of A4 paper, one reusable colour swatch board, a red marker pen and a memento card. After the first written questions was a free-form drawing one which led to pages that were more specific, asking for: ‘one spot only’, colour associations and just arrows.

Q1: What makes you feel each of the emotions?

Q2: How do you feel these emotions in your body? Draw anything you wish.

Q3: Where do you feel these emotions in your body? Draw one spot only.

Q4: What colours do you associate with these emotions? Refer to numbered colour chart.

Q5: Do your emotions have direction? If yes, draw arrows.

Ultimately, 250 men and women from over 35 countries between the ages of 6 and 75 responded. The sample was a mix of friends, their friends, colleagues and strangers. The drawings were compiled in layered Photoshop documents and the ‘text’ data in an excel file which was used to create an sql database.

These are the summaries of all answers from each of the five previous questions for five different emotions.

ANGER

JOY

FEAR

SADNESS

LOVE

Via emotionallyvague.com