What Is That Thing? p.1

As a hobby writer, and somebody who took playwriting/ story writing classes in college, one thing I learned is filtering. Do you really need that? Is that description really necessary? It was also around this time that I started getting interested in material design and started seeing how beautiful things around me really are. Some things we take for granted and never really notice the time and dedication went into making something we use every day without a second thought. And so, something I want to try out is to combine these two hobbies while also creating something that is engaging and interested. Every so often I want to create writing that is not only for my benefit, but is engaging to the audience. How much filtering can I do so that a description can be minimal, and possible abstract, yet still give a clear representation of what the object is. Every week I will try to release a small blurb/ description of an object based on one or multiple of our senses, and it will be up to the reader to figure out what it is. Results will be released the following week, attached to the next description.

It looks like a rectangle, but smoothed out. The sides bend inward, almost as if it had been held by a person who shaped it to fit their hand. The majority of the body is a shade of dark blue, similar to that of the ocean when it meets the sky at the horizon.

The front ⅔ are covered is covered in buttons of a variety of sizes and styles. As you look at them you see a repetition of style and color. It creates an idea of separation, yet at the same time, a consistency and grouping. There are three styles of buttons. There are rectangular buttons. There are buttons that are also rectangular, but could be almost mistaken as square upon a quick inspect. And there are the misshapen ovular ones.

There are 4 main colors. The first is a bright neon yellow, somewhere between a highlighter and the scrubbing side of a sponge. The second is a tan color, similar to the color of wet sand. Third is white, but not a bright white. It is a muted white eggshell. The last color is blue, but there are two different shades. The first is a nice baby blue, like the color of the sky in the early morning. The other shade is a darker blue, almost as if it is a direct copy of the color of the Microsoft Word logo.

In the top right is a single button that is yellow, with dark blue writing. Next to it and below it are 5 buttons in the 3x2 layout of a Tetris piece. They are dark blue with strange symbols and writing on them. Surrounding them, are ven more buttons, but theses are dark blue with write writing, laid out in a weird amorphous pattern. Off to the upper right are weird four ovular buttons laid out like a compass, pointing in the four cardinal directions. They are baby blue and on them are little white on them that are the same white as the previous buttons. To the far right bottom are 5 baby blue buttons with iconic white symbols on them. Some of them are hard to describe, yet there names are known to everybody and their function is used by people almost every day, be it consciously or subconsciously. In the center bottom are 12 white buttons laid out 3 x 4 with dark blue writing on them. Just like the previous buttons, these buttons have symbols that would be hard to describe to somebody that has never seen them, but are almost universally known to all.

Above the buttons there is a trapezoid cut out consisting of smooth clear plastic that digs into the frame of the object. Underneath the plastic the majority of the cutout is covered by shiny reflective silver paint. In the middle is a rectangle screen. However, unlike the black screens of a phone or an iPad that most people are used to, tt has a light gray green tint and if you look real closely you can almost make out the shadow of small gray squares. Above the screen is the logo and name of the company, using the same two shades of blue on the buttons, but these words/ symbols are different in that they are shiny and immediately draw your eye to them. And finally, above that, there is a rectangular cutout, and inside it are 4 smaller brown rectangle.

Please post below what you think and if you have any advice or suggestions.