Ambigram Design for Jihwan/Sewon

“Thanks for your work, and hope you can do such a great work like this time if I need any more designs later on.” – customer feedback on Jihwan/Sewon ambigram

Jayden saw this website of my ambigrams and liked them.  They sent this request to my email address.  They also prefered that I use an English font for the ambigram.

I studied the design for a few days.  Looking at it, I knew I’d get problems designing the letter W.  How do I design a W such that it when inverted will still look like a W and not a letter M?  Tough one.  Later, I saw that the H-O inversion was even more difficult.

One way to design the W without making it look like an M is to make the sides curved.  It is seldon seen for an M to have curve lines but a W having curves is more popular.  Thus, this helps the eyes distinguish the letter more as a W than an M.

H-O inversion was designed similar to the Anthony ambigram.  I tried to embed the lower case H inside an O pattern.  The O was a bit thin and has a lot of white space in the middle.  This helps make the H more visible.  I overlapped the O with the W a little bit to maintain good spacing between the characters.

Some ornaments were added to the final design and another revision was made.  But the customer might consider using the simple design above.

I have been excited about this movie. Tom Hanks still plays the role of Robert Langdon, the Harvard University professor of symbology.  Ayelet Zurer plays Vittoria Vetra and Ewan McGregor plays the Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca.  The film is directed by Ron Howard and the script was written by Akiva Goldsman.  They are the same people who brought you The Da Vinci Code movie.

Visit the official movie site of Angels and Demons at http://www.angelsanddemons.com/.

heilig ambigram design

“Its perfect! I love how it turned out. Thanks so much for the amazing work! I’m so glad that I found you and that you were able to do this for me!” — Kate on heilig ambigram

I received this ambigram commission thru this website. Kate wanted the word “heilig” which is a German word for sacred. She also wanted it to be feminine.

When I work with ambigrams that are feminine, I usually go for cursive font styles. It is an approach that would click with women. Many times, the cursive look will get an instant nod and would not require any modifications.

For the heilig design, I used a common cursive font that I used for many of my designs already. The middle letters were a bit easy. Working with IE-LI was a bit quick. The H-G inversion was a bit harder. The design above was my first revision.

The first revision needed a lot of improvements. The dot for the letter I’s did look that nice. It didnt fit well with the overall design. It looked stiff. So I used a spiral dot instead which is similar to the curves in H and G.

The bigger problem was the H-G part. The H looked like a B. If I move the floating curve at the bottom, it will be too separated that the G will look like a Y.

The first solution was to add a “foot” for the letter H. This will add to the lower case H look and avoid mistaking it as a B. I also tried moving the vertical stroke of the letter H either higher or lower. But it had an effect on how the letter G looked like. So I decided to change the floating curve to a more cursive one. It was more appropriate and the B effect was greatly reduced.

The final design is shown below. I loved how the final design turned out. The letters were very much alive with the curves but still maintained a subtle feminine effect.

Ambigram design for veterinarian

“wow sir this is great! ayos! i really liked the paw prints pang vet talaga…” – malds on Veterinarian Ambigram

This is an ambigram request from an online promotion at takbo.ph.  One of the winners, Malds, was entitled an ambigram and requested for the word veterinarian.

Most of the letters were easy for the inversion except for the RI-A part.  This is where it took time to get the desired effect.  I guess the font type fit the design well to help me pull off a decent one.

The paw prints were added to make it more attractive in the final design.  It also helps the reader identify that the word is indeed veterinarian at a single glance.  Ornaments like this give association to the word itself helping the design to be more readable.  It’s a nice trick for any ambigram design but seldom used.

Anthony Ambigram

“Excellent communication, excellent artistic vision, in the end it was even better than I expected and indeed a perfect reflection of what I wanted.” – Customer feedback on Anthony ambigram

I was commissioned to design an ambigram for a tattoo. The requirements was to have an ambigram for the name Anthony and incorporated with the design is something related to music and a scroll.

I used an English Font which was a bit modern. Letters were tall and slim which are appropriate for masculine designs. My first design was had wider letters and we opted for this instead. The hard part was designing the letter T-O inversion. Both letters are very different in structure. My solution was to combine them having a letter T and a circular pattern at the bottom for the letter O.

The design might cause some trouble when reading them since the T doesn’t look like a T and the letter O can be mistaken as a letter Q. I used two trick in designing ambigrams here.

First is to guide the reader to the more common letters in AN and NY and allow them to fill in the blanks. Very few names can start with AN and end with NY. Thus in the design, I made sure that the AN and NY easily stands out. This narrows down the readers options on the names.

Second, design the top of the letters well. The top part of the letter defines most of the letter itself. This is John Langdon’s tip as well. Here, the bar for the T is very prominent. Also the circular part is place a bit lower to put more emphasis on the letter T. When inverted, the letter O becomes more prominent since the bar is now below.

I would agree that the O is very close to being a Q. But again the trick is to let the reader fill in the blanks once you have established the other letters. I would always get people to say the name ANTHONY rather than ANTHQNY when I show them the design.

There are other solutions for Anthony that avoids the T-O problem. But I find this solution better in form and readability.

The next part was adding the music and scroll. The client sent in samples of a music sheet and converted that to a scroll type instead of a flat piece of paper. We also decided that the scroll will open vertically rather than horizontally.

My idea was to let the musical notes fly randomly from one side and when it reaches the paper, the musical notes will stick into the scroll. It’s like beautiful music is being created from the air. The shadows and skews on the music notes on the right side are to give an impression that it is still flying. I have to create and render each note one by one to achieve the desired effect.

Final Design - Anthony Ambigram on Scroll

When the final design was complete, the client was happy with the design. I was also happy that the design meets our expectations. We had a great communication as we progress with the design especially when I am stuck at different options. I have to send emails and ask which direction to take. It really saved us a lot of time and unnecessary revisions.

]]> http://ambigfx.wordpress.com/2008/08/27/ambigram-anthony/feed/ 1 jinoe http://ambigfx.wordpress.com/2008/08/05/ambigram-seven-sins/ http://ambigfx.wordpress.com/2008/08/05/ambigram-seven-sins/#comments Tue, 05 Aug 2008 01:29:13 +0000 jinoe http://ambigfx.wordpress.com/?p=208 ]]>

Ambigram - Gluttony (draft)

This could be the most ambitious series of ambigrams I have made. A client asked me to create a design on the seven cardinal sins: Envy, Sloth, Gluttony, Pride, Lust, Greed and Wrath. I know it wont be easy since some words will be tough to design like Lust and Gluttony. To add the challenge is I should use a letter style that fits the word as well. The design for Lust should depict lust, Envy should depict envy, Pride should depict pride, and so on.

While I can do one ambigram a week, this project stretched for several weeks as I break my head for inspiration, made several revisions and gone blank on a couple of words. The toughest was Pride where I had 10 revisions on it until I got a nod from the client.

I cannot post the any of the accepted designs here. I have to wait until the client is able to produce the final products of my design. Maybe then he will allow me to post them. But those designs really tested my limits in designing ambigrams. I have used unconventional styles, discovered several techniques and improved the overall appeal. I was also surprised with what I was able to accomplish.

Visit the online tshirt gallery at http://www.tshirt-gallery.com/gallery/index.html

Now I am designing another difficult ambigram. I had made several drafts on my notebook for two weeks already. It was just yesterday that I made a good draft. I hope to complete it in two weeks time.

“Ei !!!! I like it! Sooo girla-lu nga!” Karen on Karen Ambigram

Another design with the K-N inversion. This time, it’s for a girl so I made the design very feminine. She liked it a lot. However, one problem she mentioned with the design is the K being read as an N. I think this is due to the short vertical side of the letter K and can be modified pretty easy by now. The Hibiscus flower also distracts the letter K. I might need to move it around.

I often use this font for female names. I find a thick font more feminine and a thin font more masculine. So I learned that I could vary on the thickness to create separate designs for male and female.

The flower design is actually a previous plan on a design for summer. I never got to work on it. But since it looked well here, I just might get back on that plan next year.

Ian-Ria Ambigram

“First off, good job! Grabe, ang tyaga mo gumawa ha… Naaliw lahat ng taong pinakitaan ko nito” – Ria on Ian/Ria Ambigram

Ria emailed me for this request. She wanted an ambigram that combines the names Ria and Ian in one design. She is planning to use this for their wedding next year.

For this design, I decided to use a script font which I thought will be appropriate. With this font, it will look nice on a wedding invitation or for other wedding accessories.

It looks simple but working on the R-N inversion was hard. I followed the design from another ambigram artist (Mark Simonson) for this one since that was the best design for R-N. Other solutions are possible with a gothic letter style but this one really rocks for a script design. The middle I-A was less complicated and was done easily. The last part for A-I was a bit hard especially in making an uppercase I for the design.

Ria liked the final output. She had a few more requests though like changes on the color and making the vines form into a circle. She also wanted a more visible letter R which Im still trying to figure out. Im glad it turned out well.

Best wishes to you Ria and Ian.

This is a request from my officemate, Ricci. She wanted an ambigram for her two little angels, Iya and Ally. Those are their nicknames. I chose them instead of the real names since its easier to work on.

The ambigrams went well since the letters cooperated. Especially with Ally where the LL part is a natural ambigram. Designing Iya was a bit tough but it came out great.

Ricci wanted something girly for her girls. Thus, I added those ornaments with the design. What I liked about the designs was that I was able to use the same style for both. Its not that often I can do that. Now they can use it proudly.