Synaesthesia: Content planning

Zine series 

• each zine will have an overall description of synaesthesia then will specify on one strand of it
• the series will have a consistent design but different colours could separate each of the zines apart from eachother
• the use of CMYK could be an effective way to represent the idea of colour perceptions

Content order:

• synaesthesia in general description
• specific description
• case studies and artwork/interviews (primary/found)

Ordinal-linguistic personification

This type is known as ordinal-linguistic personification or OLP. The individual will associate ordered sequences with various personalities. Ordered sequences may include numbers, letters, months etc. For example, someone may look at the letter ‘A’ and think in his mind that ‘A’ is a rude letter.

Lexical-Gustatory 

This one of the rarer synaesthesia types and those who experience this kind of synaesthesia evoke different kinds of tastes when they hear certain words or phonemes. Research has shown that associations between the words and what a synaesthete is able to taste are constrained by tastes he or she has experienced early in life. 

Synaesthesia can occur between any two senses or perceptual modes, so there are a large number of combinations that could be made but there are some that are known to be more common. 

Grapheme-to-colour

Associating/seeing individual letters or numbers with a specific colour. Usually, two people do not associate the same colours, apart from the letter A which has commonly been reported to be red.

Sound-to-colour

Sound triggers the visualisation of coloured, generic shapes. For certain people, the stimuli are limited, and only a few types of sounds will trigger a perception. Usually, the perceived colours appear in generic shapes such as squares, circles and triangle.

Number-form

A number form is a mental map that consists of numbers. When a person with number-form synaesthesia thinks about numbers, a number map is involuntarily visualised. Number forms are a product of 'cross-activation' between regions in the parietal lobe - a part of the brain that is involved in numerical and spatial cognition.