ACAC 'Sadiq – Shana' Finished

The second edition of the ACAC was concluded earlier this week with the publication of the winning ambigrams. The task was to design an ambigram of the names Sadiq and Shana. I recommend taking a look at the results presented in this article at ambigram.com. The submitted works use a wide variety of solutions, showing that there was no single best approach.
I was happy to note that, although I didn't make it into the top five, the following entry of mine was posted as an additional favourite of the judges.

Sadiq – Shana [180° rotational], GIMP, November 2009

The names Sadiq and Shana were definitely not straightforward to deal with. Yet by no means that meant the pair was impossible, which is illustrated by the amount of variety between the top entries. for this ambigram I added a bit more style than usual with the flourishes, colour and hatching. In contrast my second entry was a much simpler monochrome work.

Sadiq – Shana [figure-ground], GIMP, November 2009

This second one was more of a fun attempt at doing something new. It is in fact the first figure-ground ambigram I've ever made. First I noticed the two A's from Shana fit well within the holes of the D and Q of Sadiq. The solution for the other parts followed fairly easily from that observation.

The new challenge

The challenge for next month is holiday themed. For more information go to this page to read the specifications for the latest ACAC.

An Example of Functional Decoration

Another day, another ambigram. Here is one made from a phrase that proved to be just the right challenge—nothing impossible but still requiring some creative thinking for the trickier parts.

Dragon Slayers, GIMP, November 2009

An especially interesting aspect of this ambigram are the dragon tail and sword details, which play both a decorative and a typographic role. They were not just added as thematic decoration, but mainly to help solve some of the more difficult letter conversions in this ambigram. The initial D and S of both words would not be complete glyphs without the the sword and the tail, so here their most important role is to make the ambigram readable. However, at the end of the words they are not required as typographic element and in this case they represent just what they look like: a tail and a sword.

This can be a powerful trick, as it is a stylish extension to the more common technique where flourishes or other abstract decorations are also used as parts of letters. The advantage of actual iconic imagery supporting your ambigram is that it can help define the theme and make people associate it with the ambigram's meaning more quickly.

The design for the other parts of this ambigram was not overly difficult to come up with. Only the g-y combination took a while to modify to my likings. Most time probably went into making the letter style consistent and polishing details. After the vectorizing process I also decided to go for a bit more elaborate presentation, adding the colour details and background texture—seems to fit the ambigram nicely.

Broadcast Yourself

Youtube, GIMP, November 2009

A not particularly complex ambigram. The descending lettering was inspired by the 'out' to 'ub' solution. Since the step down in the 'ou' and 'ub' was forced, it seemed like a good idea to extend this descending line to the entire ambigram.