The first issue of the ACAC, 'Resurrection', has come to a close. The results have been published and show some excellent winning entries (see this page). The first place was taken by John Langdon with a very worthy Reincarnate ambigram, confirming his legendary status as ambigrammist yet again. Of course I had my own entry in the contest as well, though it didn't make it to the published designs. Hence I will present and discuss it here.
Resurrection – Reincarnate, GIMP, September 2009
First I would like to note one difference between my entry and the winning contest entries. Unlike those, my ambigram does not have any special effects applied to it at all. It may have been one of the few unfiltered black and white only entries. The article announcing the winners even stated: 'Yet there were quite a few ambigrams that were ruined by overuse of filters, effects & extra design elements.'. I am always a bit reluctant applying any effects to an ambigram, maybe because I very much enjoy simple black and white artwork. It seems however, given that the top five entries all had at least some form of filtering applied, that it is still considered an important part of the presentation. Now on to my design process.
I spent quite some time looking for suitable words that both fit in with the theme and were not too difficult to turn into an ambigram. The first idea I had was simply making an ambigram of the word resurrection. Mirror symmetry turned out to work better than rotational, which lead to the following sketch.
Resurrection sketch, GIMP, September 2009
The sketch didn't entirely convince me that this was the way to go, so I decided exploring some more options. After quite a bit of searching I finally settled with the words resurrection and reincarnate.
What I noticed about this pair, was the relatively simple 'rein' to 'ction' conversion, both with mirror and rotational symmetry. Choosing a symmetry therefore depended on the other parts of the word. The rotational solution was tempting for a trivial u–n pair. However, the a to s was much easier solved with mirror symmetry and a mirror u to n solution wasn't too hard either. Since the other letters didn't seem to have a preferred symmetry, I decided to go for a reflective ambigram.
Choosing the right symmetry didn't solve all problems though. For some letter combinations I still had to figure out a decent solution. Especially the conversion from the double r in resurrection to 'ar' proved to be difficult. The main issue with repeated letters is that they have be as similar as possible in order to look realistic. This can be tricky if the two have to be mirrored into two different letters. As simple as the final result may look, it still took me quite a while to figure out a decent solution.
The letter style evolved pretty naturally from the sketches I made. I started out with a pretty rigid sans-serif type, but eventually moved on to this more flexible Roman type. Somehow it seems to fit the theme better as well.
The new challenge: Sadiq – Shana
With the closure of the first challenge, the next one has been announced. This time the challenge allows for less freedom as the words for the ambigram have already been specified: the names Sadiq and Shana. The challenge is in fact more of an open commission from an ambigram fan, who offers $100 for the best design. For more details take a look at the contest page.
I'm with you. I prefer not to add extra decoration, I think it detracts from the readability. I was quite surprised that John Langdon had gone that way.
ReplyDeleteDecoration's are not really bad although they are really hard to pull off. But yes, it also says at ambigram.com that sometimes, an ambigram can stand on itself without other elements.
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