Jutt's Weblog

Opposites Attract

2010-08-21T23:03:00.004+02:00

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

2010-07-18T15:41:00.007+02:00

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

2010-06-17T23:58:00.004+02:00

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

2010-06-03T16:08:00.004+02:00

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

2010-05-03T16:27:00.008+02:00

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

2010-03-06T00:20:00.004+01:00

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

2010-02-12T14:25:00.005+01:00

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

2010-01-12T16:23:00.007+01:00

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

2010-01-07T23:47:00.005+01:00

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

2010-01-03T17:48:00.007+01:00

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.

I Wish You All a…

2010-01-01T01:00:00.003+01:00

Happy 2010, GIMP, December 2009

Happy Holidays

2009-12-24T14:15:00.001+01:00

Within a day or so the submission deadline for the Holidays 2009 ACAC will close. Normally I would wait with publishing my entries until the challenge results are published. However, that is not scheduled until January 14th, which is a bit late for revealing these holiday themed designs. So without further ado here are my entries.

2009 Holiday Season, GIMP, December 2009

There were several reasons for the selection of this phrase. First of all I wasn't sure which festivity to pick for the ambigram, so I decided to keep things less specific by referring to the entire holiday season. Secondly the words 'holiday' and 'season' were of similar length making it easier to create an ambigram of one word to the other. When a little studying revealed the words cooperated pretty nicely, the decision to stick with this phrase was made.

Initially I tried making it a rotational ambigram, but this quickly turned out to be problematic around the li-s conversion. As a mirror ambigram however these letters were much more easily solved, so I changed strategies. After that decision also came the idea to add the '2009', which would have been impossible with a rotational ambigram.

For the decoration of the ambigram I mostly focused on the effects on the lettering. Achieving such lighting effects was something I'd never done before. I tried to give it a shiny, decorative look appropriate for the season. The simple background pattern was added to make sure the ambigram would not look not too bland. Finally the holly leaves were added as the finishing touch.

White Christmas, GIMP, December 2009

The design for this second Ambigram was for the most part rather straightforward. One bit was trickier though: the C-i conversion. I considered using a simpler solution with a lowercase c, but that method forced the i to bend in the wrong direction making it look odd. The alternative solution I found for this ambigram only works because the C borrows a large part of its curve from the preceding e. It may be unconventional, but I prefer it this way, as the capital emphasizes the start of the word Christmas. The subtle colour difference in the lettering was added for further distinction between the two words.

Perfect Puzzle Pieces

2009-12-08T00:03:00.008+01:00

One of my favorite puzzles I have is my pentomino set. A pentomino is a shape built up from five squares joined together along their edges. There are exactly twelve distinct pentominoes and together they make for some interesting brain teasers. I have a wooden set, where the main goal is to fit the pieces back in the rectangular box, but countless other shapes can be made.

I cannot say that creating ambigrams is quite like solving such puzzles, but it does have a similar appeal to me. Designing an ambigram is after all a form of puzzle solving as well. Here's one to the pentominoes. The background tessellation shows a solution for fitting them within a 6×10 rectangle.

Pentomino, GIMP, December 2009

ACAC 'Sadiq – Shana' Finished

2009-11-27T20:20:00.007+01:00

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

2009-11-13T20:25:00.007+01:00

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

2009-11-08T14:01:00.004+01:00

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.

File Not Found

2009-10-29T14:17:00.007+01:00

Error 404, GIMP, October 2009

No, this is not a real error page. It's just that the 'error 404' message forms an almost natural diagonal mirror ambigram. A quick proof of concept.

Bookplate Ambigram

2009-10-25T18:16:00.004+01:00

Bookplates fascinate me. It is not that I feel the need to have one for any of my own books. However, they often have nifty designs with personalized graphics and signature, so having one would still be pretty neat. Hence it occurred to me to make an ambigram of the words 'Ex Libris', which could make a nice bookplate.

Ex Libris, GIMP, October 2009

Trying to make a rotational ambigram of it was a bit of a pain—the x is often an especially nasty character to deal with if it is not mapped to itself. This reflective totem version was therefore a very welcome alternative.

Some Older Work

2009-10-20T17:10:00.012+02:00

Lately I haven't spent much time designing ambigrams. The only one I made last month was my submission for the ACAC. What I am going to do now is show a few older ambigrams, which had not appeared on this blog yet. You may have seen them on my DeviantArt or Flickr galleries though.

Deadly Rooms of Death, GIMP, November 2008

Deadly Rooms of Death, which is usually abbreviated to DROD, is the name of my favorite puzzle game series made by Caravel Games. This is not a gaming blog, so I will not go into further detail, but I recommend anyone interested in puzzle games to take a look at the official site at caravelgames.com.

This ambigram is actually the oldest one I fully made with GIMP. Some strokes are not perfectly fluent and since this first attempt I have learned quite a bit about how to handle the curves. Still it marks an important step forward in the way I made ambigrams. Compared to my early adventures in paint this is a great deal more sophisticated.

I am also quite pleased how this particular ambigram turned out. The 'ae' in both the first and the last word simply begged to be mapped to each other, but that also forced the trickier D-th combination and the even harder D-dly conversion. Especially the latter looks complex, but is hopefully still readable. Luckily the central 'Rooms of' part was more straightforward.

Avatar, GIMP, July 2009

The avatar ambigram was mostly an experiment to see how a new A-T solution worked out. Since the v-a was also trivial in capitals, I aimed for an all caps ambigram. This led me to discovering another a-r solution as well.

I am however a bit uncomfortable with the letter spacing on this one. I cannot get the initial A and V much closer together without them overlapping. That means there will always be a relatively large triangular area of whitespace between the letters. On the other hand, the four letters in the middle could be packed a lot tighter, but doing so seems to clash with the much wider space between the first two (and last two) letters. Therefore it seems I am stuck with an oddly wide spaced ambigram.

Maurits Cornelis Escher, GIMP, July 2009

Sometimes you discover a conversion between letters, but you do not actually use it until much later. The M-R glyph in this ambigram is one such discovery I made a long time before it got implemented. This ambigram is the full name of the Dutch graphic artist whom most know only by his last name. Being a long time fan of Escher's work it was only logical that sooner or later I would try my hand at this ambigram.

Ambigram, GIMP, July 2009

Of which word have been made the most ambigrams? Although it's probably impossible to give a definitive answer, the word ambigram itself would be a good bet. Almost every artist has made their own version and many different solutions have been found. This makes it difficult to come up with something new, so I cannot be sure my approach is original. I have not seen an all caps solution before though.

First ACAC 'Resurrection' has ended

2009-10-10T14:08:00.010+02:00

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.

The Indian Clerk

2009-08-19T13:04:00.007+02:00

At the moment I am reading the historical novel 'The Indian Clerk' by David Leavitt. With the lack of inspiration for ambigram themes, I resorted to the book's characters. Here are two ambigrams of the main characters' names.

Ramanujan, GIMP, August 2009

Hardy, GIMP, August 2009

Both are mathematicians who really existed: Srinivasa Ramanujan, a mathematical genius from India and G. H. Hardy, a prominent British mathematician who discovered Ramanujan's talent and brought him to England. They had a close research collaboration despite their differences in personalities. The two would have deserved to be united into one symbiotogram, if only their names had not worked much better as separate ambigrams.

The 7×7 Ambigram Grid

2009-08-09T13:45:00.008+02:00

Recently an article about a new ambigram card game was posted on the ambigram.com website [link]. All 50 cards from the game bear an ambigram on their front side. These ambigrams were, apart from one on a wild card, constructed from a set of seven words: Angel, Drink, Finger, Joker, Killer, Learn and Siren. All pairs of words from that set, including words paired with themselves, were turned into an ambigram or symbiotogram using the Glyphusion ambigram generator. This resulted in 49 ambigrams, ignoring the fact that pairs such as (Angel, Drink) and (Drink, Angel) are the same in practice. To see them all nicely ordered in a 7×7 grid, take a look at this image from said article.

One particular claim from the article stirred up some discussion in the comment section. The author had stated: "The Ambigram deck itself seems impossible at first, and in fact, it would have been impossible just a few years ago. No human being could have designed it alone, even if they possessed several lifetimes to work on the problem.". To provide some more context: the impossibility of the task was due to the selection of seven words suitable enough to produce 49 legible ambigrams from. For the game the words had been selected with the aid of a computer and the author had considered it impossible for a human being.

This statement was quickly attacked by Kevin Pease, who, as a challenge, proposed to create a full set of ambigrams from randomly chosen words. He did finish the challenge, but showed that although the creation of the 49 ambigrams from a random set was possible, such a random selection would not result in optimally readable ambigrams. See his full grid here.

The question remains though if the word selection task is really only feasible with help from a computer. Although not all of Kevin's ambigrams were clearly readable, the solutions from the Glyphusion generator are not perfect either. Some people even favored Kevin's designs in terms of readability. If one was bound to Glyphusion to generate the ambigrams, it would make sense that a computer could help determine which sets of words to choose. However if a human were to draw the ambigrams, I am not sure a computer algorithm could be of much help at all.

The idea that a human cannot adequately select seven words is hard to prove—as is often the case with claims of impossibility. The opposite though would be easily made plausible if a human were to select seven words and turn them into 49 ambigrams of clearly higher quality compared to the original ones by Glyphusion. And that is exactly what I am going to attempt here.

Somewhere down the comments section of the ambigram.com article, the author wrote the following: "I suppose you could "cheat" and choose 7 words that are composed of just the letters "i", "t" and "l" (purely vertical), or "o", "a" and "e" (purely circular), or that have the same basic repeating character patterns, …". A sensible idea, and exactly what had occurred to me as well. Given a few letters that easily transform into each other one can simply choose the seven words to consist of these letters only. As a matter of fact I had already noted how the letters c, a, s, e and o had this property.

These letters alone were a bit limited to choose seven words from, so I had to modify the strategy a bit. In the end I came up with the two groups {c, a, s, e, d, o} and {f, l, i, r, t}, but with the limitation that letters from a group could only be used on certain positions within the words. It was sufficient though and this was the result:

7×7 Ambigram Grid, GIMP, August 2009

A perfect grid of 49 ambigrams bringing the following seven magic words together: Facet, Ideal, Loser, Toast, Feast, Radar, Local. Is it cheating? Possibly, but one could also call it a realistic approach. Finding seven words which all cooperate with each other is a tremendously difficult task, and you need to use every trick you can to successfully find the right seven.

However, the more important question is: Are these solutions better than those by Glyphusion or Kevin Pease? Well, I am afraid I cannot give an impartial answer, so I will leave it to the readers to decide for themselves. Feel free to discuss in the comment section here, or over at ambigram.com, where I will post a comment about this as well.

More FAC Entries: Pottermania

2009-08-04T16:19:00.012+02:00

Two more entries for the new Flickr Ambigram Challenge. Both are Harry Potter themed, which was especially encouraged for this challenge.

Harry Potter, GIMP, August 2009

A ambigram consisting mostly of capitals except for one r (and arguably the smaller O). It is a bit of a shame that the r's are so dissimilar, but at least they look fairly well readable to me.

Half-Blood Prince, GIMP, August 2009

A relatively simple yet elegant solution. I especially like how every new word is introduced with a capital at a lower baseline.

The Flickr Ambigram Challenge

2009-07-30T19:20:00.010+02:00

First of all I'd like to note I'm back home and finally able to post after a three week long hiatus. I didn't spend my time without ambigrams altogether though. During my vacation I made some sketches for the newest ambigram challenge.

Just before I left, the first edition of a new contest was announced: the Flickr ambigram Challenge (FAC). Initiated in the Flickr Ambigram group, this challenge was created to fill in the gap left by the NAC. Because of the release of the 6th Harry Potter movie, the theme for this month is 'Magic'. I've just finished my first entry, which is a perceptual shift (a.k.a. oscillation) ambigram, meaning that it can be read as two different words without having to change the orientation of the image.

Witches – Wizards, GIMP, July 2009

I created this ambigram while reading Terry Pratchett's 'Equal Rites', which deals with with the differences between witches and wizards. The ambigram makes a nice metaphor of how witchcraft and wizardry are only two different ways of looking at magic. This is the first Oscillation I've made so far and I'm quite happy with it. Especially with this type of ambigram it's all about choosing the right words to begin with.
More entries for the FAC coming soon.

Away for a While

2009-07-09T23:28:00.008+02:00

Most of the following two weeks I'll be spending my vacation time in regions (not particularly) far away from home. No updates during that period, but here's a quick ambigram design before I leave.

Vacation, GIMP, July 2009

The Grand Cycling Event

2009-07-02T17:50:00.008+02:00

Only two days till the Tour the France commences. Here is a new ambigram for the occasion.

Tour de France, GIMP, July 2009

The letters cooperated nicely for this ambigram—the ou/nc conversion was a natural. No fancy tricks were required, giving the ambigram a simple and balanced look. I particularly like how the word 'de' is smaller and has a lower baseline, clearly separating it from the other words.

Update

I received a short critique of this ambigram by email from none other than John Langdon. His comments inspired me to improve a few details. Note the reworked T, shifted baselines and shorter d/r.

Tour de France (improved), GIMP, July 2009

Ambigram Font Update - Download Available!

2009-06-30T00:27:00.016+02:00

Good news regarding the ambigram font! I managed to convert it into a real font file—see download link & new license below. Note that this is possibly not the final version, some details may need tweaking.

The whole conversion process turned out not to be trivial at all. The glyphs were originally designed in GIMP with paths, so the first step was exporting them as svg file. I manually reformatted the svg data to conform the svg font standard, which required some studying of the official svg font specifications. The modified svg was subsequently imported into FontForge, where I made the final adjustments and created the OpenType file. FontForge caused some trouble as well. I had to install cygwin along with it, which is somewhat complicated and failed the first time. Anyway, in the end I figured it all out and learned a whole lot about fonts in the process.

The font is now called 'Lake Reflection'. It contains quite a few extra characters as well. You can use nearly all characters available on a regular keyboard (except ` ~ ^ / \ ). As I said, this is not necessarily the final version. If you notice any aspects that could be polished, or if you encounter any technical problems when installing or using the font, feel free to ask questions and provide feedback.

Lake Reflection font sample in WordPad

Download & License

Download: LakeReflection.zip

This font is released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0 license. When redistributing please link to this blog and attribute the work to me.

In Memoriam

2009-06-27T00:53:00.005+02:00

The first thing I heard today when my alarm clock radio woke me up was that legendary pop star Michael Jackson had passed away yesterday. It came as a bit of a shock—not because I'm a great fan of him, but to hear the news first thing in the morning while still half asleep made it somewhat surreal. Naturally it has been the number one item on the news today. I'll just join in with this special ambigram in memory of the famous artist that was Michael Jackson, the King of Pop.

Michael Jackson, King of Pop, GIMP, June 2009

Ambigram Font

2009-06-24T15:18:00.017+02:00

UPDATE: See this post to download the now available font file.

Here I present the first version of my ambigram font. Except I cannot provide actual font files yet, just images for now. For license information read end of post.

Ambigram Font, GIMP, June 2009

This font allows for the creation of ambigrams for any word. It produces horizontal mirror ambigrams, also called lake reflection ambigrams, because if one were to hold the ambigram over a lake, it would be also readable in the reflection of the water.

Sample text

The lake reflection symmetry is rarely used for ambigrams and many I have seen are actually symbiotograms. Why is it so ill represented? It may be because it is regarded as somewhat trivial, which I admit it is. Surely if you have a full set of letters with a horizontal symmetry axis, turning any word into an ambigram becomes a piece of cake. The lake symmetry seems in fact the only one feasible for an ambigram font. However, as far as I know nobody ever attempted to create a full character set. Hence I recently decided it was about time that changed.

I first started creating the capitals, since many of those naturally have a horizontal symmetry axis. That does not mean they were all easy. For the F and N I had to overhaul my initial designs entirely, replacing them with better solutions. The L initially looked just like an E with its middle horizontal stroke missing—somehow with the more curving horizontals it looks more natural. The S seemed impossible at first glance, but luckily I managed to trick my way out of it. I had to make sure the M and W were distinct enough, since they tend to transform into each other when mirrored. And then there were the horrible U, V and Z, which required the greatest sacrifices. The V ended up tilted to the right with one stroke omitted, for the Z I had to resort to an old fashioned letter form and the U was just plain mean to me.

Initially I did not plan doing the lowercase letters, but they seemed like a nice bonus. They had their own problems though. Most prominent was the trouble with ascenders and descenders, since the symmetry dictated that they would be indistinguishable from each other. This especially was dramatic for the b, p, d and q, which are undoubtedly the weakest part of the font. I actually started out with the d and q switched, but decided they both fit in better with the other's role.

Finally I also added the ciphers and some punctuation. Maybe more special characters will be added in the future. If you have any comments on the existing characters or ideas for improving them, I'll gladly try and modify them a bit more.

That only leaves one problem. I have had some trouble finding any decent programs for turning the images into an actual font file. If anyone can point out one such program—preferably freeware/open source—I would be very grateful. It would either have to take images or svg-files as input, producing a common font format like TrueType or OpenType.

License

Using this font in other works would violate the 'No Derivatives' part from the Creative Commons License the image is released under, since you would have to extract letters from the image and thereby change its original form. That is not very practical for a font, so I hope to improve the license as soon as possible. However, I will first try to find a more practical format for distributing this font. Until then you may only reproduce the image 'as is' under the restrictions of the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License.

How to Make Ambigrams Jutt Style

2009-06-23T15:46:00.018+02:00

This is an article on how I go about creating my ambigrams. This is not a definite guide on how one should approach ambigram artwork. Whatever I mention here works for me, but I figure it can be helpful to others as well. I will illustrate this article with images from the process behind one of my recent ambigrams.

Step 1 – Inspiration

The first step is finding a suitable word for turning into an ambigram. Inspiration can come from anywhere, but not every word you think of can be turned into an ambigram easily. It helps to look for features that are easily translated to an ambigram, e.g. beginning and ending letters which are natural inversions of each other. Here I will show the creation of an ambigram based on the following logo.

'Uru: Ages Beyond Myst', which is by the way a favorite computer game of mine, would be an excellent candidate to be turned into a mirror ambigram. The symmetrically placed u's of 'Uru' would cooperate very well. Also the words 'Ages' and 'Myst' are of equal length and the b and d from beyond are a natural mirror pair. These observations indicate that the ambigram is well worth trying.

Step 2 – Doodles and Basic Sketches

I start with small doodles to get a basic idea how I want to convert the letter forms into each other. I usually use small 9×9 cm paper, of which I have a large stack at hand.

Small doodles

When I have figured out my approach for the ambigram, I often switch to A4 size to work a bit on the style of the ambigram and the individual letter forms.

More sketches

Step 3 – Detailed Sketch

Once I have figured out the exact form and style of the ambigram it is time to make detailed sketches, which will be the reference I work from when making a digital version. For this I use A4 sized 5 mm grid paper, allowing me to easily measure stroke widths and lengths and consistently copy recurring parts between letters. The vertical strokes usually have an integer width in units and if the letters are slightly slanted, the slope is set to an integer ratio for easy construction. I do not use ruler or compass—I trust my ability to draw decent freehand straight lines and circles and they would not be of much help with more complex curves anyway.

Detailed sketch

Step 4 – Digitalizing

The final version of the ambigram, which is all digital work, will be done entirely with GIMP. This may sound like a somewhat odd choice for a program for making typographic art—a vector program would be a likelier choice. GIMP however also has vector functionality in the form of paths. I find those very straightforward to manipulate to the point that I can work more efficiently with paths in GIMP than with other vector programs. Also since GIMP combines both vector and pixel manipulations in one program, I find it the ideal platform for making ambigrams.

I start with creating a checkerboard grid in the bottom layer. Then I will add a white layer on top set to multiply, opacity at 50%, where I will draw the actual letter forms. With this setup I can start creating the letters by drawing their outlines or strokes with paths. I usually need a whole lot of guidelines to ensure the paths are properly aligned on the grid.

My GIMP setup showing paths outlining a letter form.

Finished paths are easily filled in with black on the drawing layer. If possible I sometimes construct letters with basic rectangular and elliptical selections, bypassing the path tool altogether. Copy-pasting between letters to keep consistency is also common. I will repeat the process until half of the ambigram is done—the other half will of course be copied from it.

I copy the finished half to a new image, where I combine it into the full ambigram. I also adjust the margins and make sure the letters are spaced properly. Below you can see the completed ambigram.

Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, GIMP, June 2009

Step 5 – Fun with GIMP (optional)

For this particular ambigram I decided to go one step further and try to mimic the look of the original logo. When you are having fun with GIMP there is no telling how that is going to work out. The result may very well differ quite a bit from what you had in mind. Basically this is just being clever with all sorts of filters. I am not going into detail here, but will just show the final image.

Uru: Ages Beyond Myst (enhanced), GIMP, June 2009

Webcomic Ambigram

2009-06-21T21:14:00.008+02:00

Like ambigrams, webcomics are a relatively new, yet considerably popular form of art. I enjoy reading quite a few them, so naturally I had to make a webcomic ambigram.

Webcomic, GIMP, May 2009

While designing the ambigram, a major problem I had to face was how to shape the w decently. At least both the i and c are needed to turn into a w. However, adding the rightmost leg of the m allowed for a a very symmetric w-shape, with the added bonus that it looked good when capitalized. The leg of the m and the c curve a bit oddly for the w, but the symmetry adds enough unity to its design to make it stand out.

I'm quite pleased with the final result. I like how the ambigram rotates around the dynamic middle c. Hopefully the upside down b is not too easily confused with a q.

Two Quick Treats

2009-06-19T22:37:00.008+02:00

There is a certain elegance in the simplicity of some shorter ambigrams. Even short words can sometimes offer surprising solutions. Recently while I was playing with antonyms I discovered this neat solution for a Hard to Soft mirror ambigram.

Hard – Soft, GIMP, May 2009

Next I would like to refer to a nice ambigram Nagfa made of my name. You can view it over here. They were kind enough to link to this weblog as well. Thank you!

Three Composers

2009-06-18T15:55:00.019+02:00

The ambigram project I am currently working on is going to take a while, so for now I will post some older works here. Being an admirer of classical music, I thought I would try to turn the names of some composers into ambigrams.

Alban Berg, GIMP, May 2009

This one was not too complicated, since the letters in the middle allowed for relatively simple one to one conversions. It was mostly the A/g pair at the ends of the word that was troubling me. The g turned out fine, but it needed the hook of the r to rotate into a recognizable A.

Sibelius, GIMP, May 2009

Sibelius was with its s's on both ends a tempting candidate. Unfortunately the middle part proved to be far less cooperative. I finally ended up with a solution where all those letters are interconnected—even the dots of the i's are provided by extensions from other glyphs.

Gustav Mahler, GIMP, May 2009

With Gustav Mahler I quickly figured out that the G to R was most easily solved with capital letters, a solution I had learned elsewhere. I was actually surprised I could carry on with the capitals in other pasts of the ambigram as well. The only real puzzle was the S, which would have to be turned into the larger part of the H. The major differences between these letters required some trickery with floating serifs and omitted strokes.
The final result is nice all caps ambigram with a lot of interconnected symbols.

The Blackletter Virus

2009-06-17T22:25:00.003+02:00

There is something bothering me slightly, which I would like to address here. Many of the ambigrams I see—especially those from beginning, inexperienced artists—are executed in Blackletter fonts. It is a trend that worries me and I will explain in a moment why. First some background.

I can think of two prominent sources for the Blackletter popularity. One is undoubtedly the set of ambigrams John Langdon created for Angels and Demons, all of which feature the Blackletter style. Because of the huge popularity of the book and film, these are for many people the first ambigrams they ever see and probably inspire them most. The other source is the tattoo art by Mark Palmer, a.k.a. Wow Tattoos, who seems to have embraced the Blackletter style for nearly all of his designs. That includes the easily accessible Ambigram Generator he created, which daily produces a large amount of ambigrams to be sold as design for a tattoo or other products.

So why then, if the Blackletter has established such an important place in the ambigram scene, should artists be cautious when using it?

My first issue with the Blackletter is its readability. To todays standards its legibility is fairly poor to say the least. Looking at some old texts written in Blackletter, you may notice some similarity with a bar code. The letters are tightly packed with many strong vertical strokes and you would hardly notice the difference would you turn the thing upside down. And similar to bar codes, most people have a hard time reading anything in Blackletter style.

However, the poor legibility is not just inherent to the typographic design only. The design may not have evolved into an optimal form yet, but at some point in history people were perfectly able to read it. Our main problem is that nowadays we hardly encounter this typographic style anymore. We have adapted to modern letter shapes, which makes it difficult to switch to unfamiliar looking letterings. Since the legibility of ambigrams is naturally impaired, a blackletter can make them even harder to read.

The second problem I have is that the abundance of ambigrams in Blackletter style gives people the impression that the Blackletter is some sort of requirement or magic formula for creating good ambigrams. On several occasions I have also seen Artists claim how the Blackletter is an ideal font for making ambigrams. This idea is in my opinion pure nonsense. I am a great supporter of using a wide variety of styles for ambigrams.

Moreover, it is usually better to let the ambigram solution influence the font choice. Some ambigram conversions work much better in one style than another. I frequently find that the hardest letter conversions determine what style to use. Not only does this help creating better ambigrams, it also keeps the door open for a myriad of styles, making ambigrams a diverse and interesting form of calligraphic art.

This is of course not a plea to abandon the Blackletter altogether. I am just saying that Ambigram artists should not forget its weaknesses and keep an open mind towards other styles as well.

The NAC Is No More

2009-06-13T18:24:00.008+02:00

With great regret I heard yesterday that the Nagfa Ambigram Challenge (NAC) has concluded its final edition. This challenge, organized by Naguib & Fadilah at http://nagfa.blogspot.com, was an invitation to all ambigram enthusiasts to submit their ambigram solutions for a predetermined phrase or theme. I recommend taking a look at the contest archives, which provide a nice overview of the various entries by artists from all over the world.

I'm especially sad to see this contest disappear already, because its last edition about Leonardo da Vinci was the first I participated in myself. I would have gladly participated in the future. Below are my two entries for this last NAC (click for high resolution).

Leonardo da Vinci, GIMP, December 2008

Vitruvian Man, GIMP, December 2008

With the NAC discontinued I hope someone else will take the initiative to host a similar contest.

Introduction

2009-06-13T13:58:00.005+02:00

This is the first post for this freshly created weblog, or blog as it is usually called nowadays. For the first post it would make sense to tell what topics this weblog is going to cover. However, since I have more than one interest, I am not entirely sure about which subjects I am going to post here. My most dominant interest at the moment seems to be ambigrams. If you do not know what those are, Take a look at the Wikipedia article.

For the time being ambigrams will be the main subject of this weblog. I realize this is quickly becoming a more and more popular subject and I am likely not the only one to start with an ambigram themed weblog. However, there seems to be no better time than now, since all the publicity from the 'Angels and Demons' Movie has spurred the interest in ambigrams.

Now I want to stress here that none of the Angels and Demons franchise is the reason for my interest in ambigrams. I have not seen the movie, never read any of Dan Browns books and the first ambigram I saw was entirely unrelated. Then what was that first inspiration?

I believe the first ambigram I stumbled upon was one by Scott Kim, reading 'Upside Down' both normally and rotated 180°. I found it in a book with optical illusions, but unfortunately it was the only ambigram in there. It did inspire me at the time to try a few of my own, most of which probably failed horribly.

That was years ago and even though the Angels and demons book had already been published, its popularity had not yet spread far enough to reach me. It was only years later when It did and I rediscovered ambigrams. Since then I have been playing with this art form and made quite a few ambigrams myself. Some of my latest more successful attempts can be seen in my DeviantArt gallery. I may repost a few of them on this weblog with some additional thoughts.

To conclude this post, there is one other ambigram I would like to mention here. I only remembered about it last week and it did not really influence my interest in ambigrams. It is an old logo from a Dutch educational TV-channel, the 'NOT', and my encounter dates all the way back to elementary school. I do not think it is being used anymore, but I will reproduce it here.

NOT logo

What is interesting is that it is an example of the much rarer diagonal mirror ambigram. It may be even the first in its sort—at least it is the first one I remember.

Well, that is it for now. I hope my future musings on this weblog will be enjoyable.