Unwelcome Mat

This ‘Come In’ / ‘Get Lost’ ambigram is inspired by the classic and popular ‘Come In’ / ‘Go Away’ door mat:

http://www.amazon.com/Coir-Doormats-Ambigram-Come-Go-away/dp/B0010C9XG4

Top Secret

Grateful Dead Final

A larger version can be found here:

http://ambidx.netne.net/thedead.gif

Like Oil and Water

Great Britain

Most of this ambigram went pretty easily, but making a readable ‘B’ was a ‘royal’ pain (so to speak!)

Looking For Bigfoot

Made for a friend who is making an independent film of the same name.

Amazingly, 90% of this fell into place very easily, while the rest went without a major struggle.

Innocent / Guilty

Continuing the opposites theme. A solution for this word combination has eluded me for a long time. A similar i/o solution can be found in John Langdon’s ‘Wordsmith’ ambigram.

Opposites

After viewing NagFa’s ( http://nagfa.blogspot.com/ ) excellent evil/kind ambigram, I realized that I haven’t tackled any antonyms for a while. The above is left/right. The fact that ‘right’ has exactly twice as many vertical lines as ‘left’ works to my advantage, and results in an interesting style.

Below is a good/evil oscillation. This uses the same i/o combination as my simple/complex oscillation.

Two New Sketches

‘Fahrenheit 451’ and ‘Queen of Hearts’.

In other news, my previous post has been featured in ambigram.com’ s Design Secrets column:

http://www.ambigram.com

Quick and Dirty Ambigram Design

It is often said that the reason rotational ambigrams work is because we concentrate on the tops of letters when we read. So when the bottoms of the letters are altered (or even removed entirely) they are still relatively readable. This is a property that even the beginning ambigrammist can take advantage of.

For those new to ambigram design, knowing where to begin can be tough, so the method below is probably the simplest way I can think of to make a basic, rough ambigram (without using automatic generators, of course!) Please note that this method doesn’t work with ALL words/phrases.

The following example is with the word ‘simple’:

Step 1: Start by making evenly spaced vertical lines. (Fig. 1)

Step 2: Use these lines as the basis of the letters.  (Fig. 2) Try to include as much of the letters’ defining characteristics as possible, although with some letters (Q, L, etc) this is not possible. It would be a good idea to make several versions, using different cases and styles. After this step, the word should be relatively readable (a second opinion here would be very useful.)

Step 3: Take this, flip it over and add it to itself. (Fig. 3) Again, it should still be relatively readable.

Step 4: Now ‘finish off’ the letters. (Fig. 4) As you can see, the bottom of the ‘L’ has been added, and the letter shapes have been tweaked to be as clear as possible. This is the most critical step.

Again, this method isn’t foolproof, and shouldn’t be used as a crutch, but it can be very effective.

This ‘vertical line’ concept isn’t anything new- it’s the main reason the ‘gothic blackletter’ font seems to be the most effective font for ambigram design.