,,sɹǝʇʇǝnoɹᴉԀ,,

Question

The answer to this puzzle is a number.

For the color blind, here are the colors of all characters in the grid:

VIBGWORGORWWBY
VIBGWOWGORIVWY
VIBGWOWGORIVWY
WWWGWWWWWGWWBW
VWWWYORWWWIWWY
WIWWYWWGORWWBW
VWBGYWWWWRIWBW
VWWWYOWWWRIVBW
WWBWYWRGORIVWY
VWBWYWWGOWIWWW

Here is the transcription of all characters in the grid:

YOFYSIYIIEFEPU
IIRMLSSSAMIPPB
KISWHLSIHEKHGE
ROJYONZSAAABJA
SWKWIIMTNCNCBH
LAUNLSRCACCCGK
KOAZOIEHCENHNL
UAUMPLNTNCTPLA
IEDEDNENEHNNGL
LOFZOEZEHEFNEU

Hint 1:

There is a hint encoded in the colors of the columns

Hint 2:

In every column one character is encoded in binary

Answer 1

The answer is

11

Deusovi solved the first part of the puzzle

which gave the instruction "Braille".

The next step is to

look at every single letter in a given rotation. These all form letters in braille.

As an example, the Y's in the upper left corner form the letter W like this

The orientation of the braille letter is always the same as the orientation of the original letters.

Most of the ambiguities in the letter orientation are solved by this step since the other orientations wouldn't give valid braille letters. However, the Is pointing west/east are not solved, nor is it clear, which letter the leftmost I belongs to. Also, the orientation of the NE/SW pointing Is and the NW/SE pointing Os is unclear. Finally, it is also not at this point clear whether the Js pointing west form the letter B or K.

The list of the braille letters (ordered by the original alphabets and orientations going clockwise starting from N) is as follows

At this point, we can see words forming from the solved letters and resolve any ambiguities to get the following message

"Who unwittingly unlocked the rift to the Upside Down?"

This is a reference to the series Stranger Things, and the answer to the question is Eleven.

One final thing to note is that as MacGyver88 pointed out in comments, the letters are also in the font of Stranger Things.

OP also pointed out in the comments below that there are multiple references to the final answer hidden in the puzzle

There are 11 characters in the title (not counting the apostrophes).

There are 11 characters of each colour (as mentioned in Vickys answer).

Some characters have a black fill, not showing the starry background. These form the Roman numeral XI (image by sarsaparilla)

Answer 2

Partial answer

First,

decoding each column as binary Unicode (white = 1, colored = 0) gives the message Rot7π[ǝll!ɐɹƣ]. "rot-7π" here means we need to rotate the stuff inside the brackets by 7π radians, which is a half turn (plus three full rotations). This gives braille. (that last character, ƣ, has a descender in some fonts, even though it may not have one in your system fonts).

And this is where I'm stuck:

I've tried converting the letters to Braille (ignoring ambiguities for now). They don't seem to draw out anything, but the rotations could indicate that we have to rotate the Braille characters. Since a full-size Braille character has eight dots, one natural way to do said rotation would be to rotate the 8 dots for each letter corresponding to how the letter is rotated.

O→O
↑ ↓
O O
↑ ↓
O O
↑ ↓
O←O

But nothing seems to come of this, either rotating to match the letter or to bring it back upright. And I'm not sure of any other interpretations of "braille" that could be used with the letters, or any way that the particular colors for each column could be used.

Answer 3

Some initial notes (definitely not a solution):

Overall:

The grid is 14 columns x 10 rows = 140 places

Colours:

There are 8 colours (ROYGBIVW)
Each column is white plus one other colour
There are a total of 11 characters of each colour other than white

Rotations:

There are 8 possible rotations (labelled 0 to 7 as eighths of a circle clockwise)
Some of the characters could be in more than one rotation as the glyph is symmetric
My transcription of the rotations (using / to indicate options):
6,3/7,0,6,1,0/4,6,0/4,1/5,6,0,6,6,1
2/6,2/6,3,5,0,5,5,4,4,5,2/6,6,6,1
1,2/6,1,1,4,5,1,0/4,4,6,0,1,4,6
3,0/4,6,6,3/7,0,4,4,4,7,4,1,6,7
1,1,1,1,1/5,0/4,5,4,6,2,6,2,1,1
0,5,2,0,0,4,3,3,4,3,2,2,4,0
1,3/7,5,4,0/4,2/6,2,1,3,2,6,1,6,1
2,5,2,5,7,5,5,4,5,7,4,7,1,7
1/5,5,1,5,1,5,1,5,1,1,2,2,4,1
0,0/4,0,4,3/7,1,4,1,4,2,0,2,2,1
Assuming the smallest number of rotations where there is an option, the frequency table is:
0: 19
1: 32
2: 19
3: 10
4: 20
5: 17
6: 17
7: 6

Characters:

The frequency table looks quite a lot like English:
A 10
B 3
C 8
D 2
E 14
F 4
G 3
H 8
I 12
J 2
K 5
L 9
M 4
N 13
O 7
P 5
Q 0
R 3
S 9
T 3
U 5
V 0
W 3
X 0
Y 4
Z 4