Opposites Attract

One popular ambigram theme is to make symbiotograms of opposites. Black and white, life and death, love and hate—these are some of the most commonly attempted couples I've seen. The latest ambigram I made fits very well into this category.

Zenith – Nadir, Inkscape, August 2010

It was somewhat inspired by the well known natural 'up/dn' pair. The zenith and nadir, the directions straight upwards and downwards from a given observation point, are in a very strict, mathematical sense each opposites. Naturally I had to add the arrow detail to the n/h glyph, to emphasize the opposing directions.

A Touch of Alchemy

Here's a relatively easy ambigram I did recently.

Antimony, GIMP, July 2010

The solution to this word was for the most part pretty trivial. The symmetrically placed n's immediately stood out as promising ambigram material and most other combinations were easily solved as well. The t/o pair on the other hand appeared less cooperative, but its solution has a nice touch to it.

My t/o conversion is by no means original—for example, Robert Maitland already used it in his Bounty Hunter ambigram. But for this specific ambigram I added an additional meaning to it: the t/o glyph also resembles the alchemical symbol for antimony ().

Cities for the ACAC

The results for the ACAC are in, a few days earlier than expected for a change. As always, the winning entries can be found on the ambigram.com results page. I was surprised most by Elwin Gill's design, a fully hand drawn piece with amazing detail. The following two ambigrams were my own submissions.

Amsterdam, GIMP, May 2010

Naturally I had to do a city from my own country. Since it had to be a relatively well known city, the options were a bit limited; Amsterdam ought to be notable enough though. The design incorporates the three crosses and colour scheme from Amsterdam's flag and coat of arms.

Alexandria, GIMP, May 2010

A somewhat random choice, yet a fun ambigram to make. It was chained to allow for optimal readability. The letters around the x were the trickiest part, but came out pretty nicely. This ambigram also uses my favourite solution for the lower case a twice.

Another Game I Like

Cave Story, GIMP, June 2010

Cave Story is a freeware game, which I played and enjoyed tremendously. It is a side-scrolling platformer game, probably one of the best, presenting a perfect mix of action and exploration supported by excellent music, graphics and storyline.

I am quite pleased with this ambigram design. A crucial step in its creation was choosing the right typographic style. The v-o combination was probably the most important factor that made me select this cursive type. Since the v had to be rounded quite a bit to turn into an o, so a smoothly flowing cursive style seemed to fit best. Some other nice details include the proper capitalization, which is often difficult to achieve in ambigrams, and the baseline shift between the two words.

A Logo Variation

It has been too long since my previous blog post. I have not been working much on ambigrams lately and even skipped last ACAC. I do hope to get more productive in the near future. For now I have one new ambigram to share, which is a take on the logo of a favourite television series of mine: Doctor Who. For the fifth season of the new series, a lot of things have changed: new Doctor, new companion, and also a new logo:

Doctor Who 2010 Logo, © BBC

For the ambigram adaptation I mimicked the font closely, although the layout had to change to make the mirror symmetry work. Also, the DW/Tardis monogram was too tricky to transform into a symmetric design, so I added a more conventional looking Tardis instead.

Doctor Who, GIMP, May 2010

So far I am enjoying the new season. It is refreshing to see a new take on the Doctor, and Matt Smith is doing an excellent job.

ACAC News

The valentine's day ACAC results are in, so make sure to visit the gallery of honour. It shows a lot of new artists have found their way to the challenge. For this issue I had sent in only one entry, because I didn't have much inspiration for valentine themed ambigrams. I did notice that the word 'valentine's' was quite easily made into an ambigram—two of the selected best works show that solution, but I decided to go with something less predictable. This is what came of it.

Red Roses, GIMP, February 2010

The New Challenge

As usual, the new contest has been announced, this time with the theme 'music'. It is definitely a very broad theme which should appeal to many people, so I expect a lot of competition this time.

Descent Into the Maelström

Just having read this short story by Edgar Allan Poe, I decided to try a quick ambigram of the word 'maelström'. Although the spelling with an ö used by Poe doesn't seem to be used any more in English, it did come in handy for the ambigram. The two dots extended nicely into the two stems of the a. An additional thematic detail is the central s, which I shaped into a stylized whirlpool.

Maelström, GIMP, February 2010

Optical Illusion

There is a nice optical illusion showing the ambiguity of the way our brains interpret convexity and concavity. An image, especially of some sort of relief, can appear convex as well as concave. The brain usually automatically switches between interpretations when the image is turned upside down. Presenting both orientations at once makes the difference even clearer.

Convex – Concave, Inkscape and GIMP, January 2010

The ambigram above showcases this illusion. Where it reads 'convex' it looks like it pops up from the background, but when rotated it not only reads 'concave', it also seems as if it is impressed into the background. That makes two illusions in one image.

I got the idea for this ambigram from M.C. Escher's litograph Convex and Concave, which is based on the same illusion.

Decorations Can Be Fun

I used to make all my ambigrams in simple black and white. However, lately I have been adding colour and decorations to some of the designs and I'm quite happy with that. This was partially due to the latest ACAC, which specifically encouraged holiday themed decorations. So far I've kept things relatively simple. The following ambigram takes the colours and decorative elements a step further though.

Psychedelic, GIMP and Inkscape, January 2010

Designing the lettering was a lot of fun. The chain solution allowed for some easy letter conversions, so I had a lot of freedom styling the letters. From the psychedelic theme came the idea to give the letters all these weird organic and fractal like ornaments. Naturally all the colours had to be very bright and contrasting to make the experience complete.

The process behind this work was also different in that I used Inkscape besides GIMP. I do really like the way GIMP handles paths and how it can work with both vectors and pixels. Yet this time I had to fiddle with a lot of different shapes and layers, which I felt were managed more easily with a real vector editor like Inkscape.

A New Year, a New Look

With the start of the new year I have decided to improve the blog's appearance, because the default template had started to bother me a bit. So I fiddled a bit with Blogger's CSS and made the layout more effective with only fairly minor changes. The new look puts the side bar and every post in a separate block, that visibly stands out from the background. Another major addition to the design is the new header. I replaced the old caption with an ambigram version, which I hope is legible enough.

Jutt's Weblog (new blog header), GIMP, January 2010

The ambigram features a Blackletter inspired by the Fraktur typefaces. They are generally a less rigid variety of Blackletter and I think especially the capitals are elegant.

I hope to the new look won't cause any trouble. Feel free to comment if you notice any problems with it.