Halloween Results
Nov 8th, 2011 | By Nikita | Category: A.C.A.C., FeatureThe Halloween challenge had it all: scary movies, monsters, killer dolls and movie villains. Although there were fewer submissions this time around (maybe everyone was scared to submit?) the quality of the submissions was incredible. From very simple to incredibly complex, there was a very wide range of work and choosing the top five ambigrams, once again, was very difficult. Take a look at the wonderful work and let’s hear what you think of the top five ambigrams for the Halloween Ambigram Challenge! [NOTE: All designs are copyrighted by the respective artists. We have permission to post them here, but you must get permission from the artist for any other use of their design, or to post them elsewhere.]
Winner – Johan Skylling
Johan Skylling once again takes the top spot. This ambigram has so many unique and complex layers to it that it seems impossible for them to work together well. Yet, all the layers integrate seamlessly with one another while still maintaining great legibility and recognition of all the elements. Beautiful work Johan!!
#2 – Dan Adona Jr.
The second entry comes to us from a new participant. Let us welcome Dan and his work to Ambigram.com! His submission is elegant & whimsical; the decorative flourishes, which are often an overused element, function well as characters in one orientation and decorative elements in another. Maybe a few too many flourishes faded into the background, but other than that, a beautifully balanced ambigram!
#3 – Robert Maitland
The legibility and elegance of this ambigram comes from its simplicity. Beautifully crafted letters, no unnecessary elements and subtle touches make this ambigram extremely easy to read and convey the meaning of the via not only the word itself, but also with colors and the lettering style. Great job Robert!
#4 – Sharath Kumar
Another great submission from Sharath. Beautiful lettering style and ambigram texture. The only element of the ambigram that’s slightly inconsistent is the angular T/E combo, which is a bit out of sync with the beautifully curved characters in the rest of the ambigram. Despite that, another well done entry!
#5 – Jennifer Thorne
Rounding off the top 5 is an ambigram from another frequent contributor. This ambigram has a very unique & original presentation. A few of the letters are a bit challenging to read, but the context of the ambigram makes up for some of those challenges. A fun presentation and a good lettering style make this submission a very worthy top five candidate. Nice work!
Dear participants, thank you for submitting your wonderful work to the Ambigram Challenges and making them as successful as they’ve been!
Ambigram Challenge 16 – Holidays!
The holiday season is here once again, which means it’s time for decorations, presents and holiday-themed ambigrams!
Rules
1. You are allowed to submit an ambigram which is relevant to any holiday that takes place from December 21st to January 6th. This covers Christmas, New Years, and several other holidays. If you are not sure whether a certain holiday is appropriate or not, email us and ask! These challenges are fun and don’t carry too many restrictions. Also, if the holiday you want to focus on is only celebrated in your culture/country, please send us a link to a brief synopsis of the holiday and its tradition. But almost anything is fair game.
2. For this challenge, your ambigram will be judged on how festive it is and how it represents the selected holiday visually. That means the use of additional visuals, colors and decorative elements that are relevant to your chosen holiday is allowed and encouraged. Of course, legibility and readability will still be valued highly.
3. Because of a wide range of various holidays and because our wonderful audience/participants reside on nearly every continent, you are allowed to submit up to 4 entries. Make sure that they are “finalized” before emailing them. And please do not email us multiple revisions of your ambigram: once you email it the first time, that’s it. We are getting swamped with entire collections of designs using incorrect file formats and dimensions; also, some artists make frequent revisions within the contest time frame and expect us to keep track of it all. You have several weeks for this challenge…so please take your time and send us the finalized submissions closer to the end of the contest. The ambigram(s) have to be created from scratch for this challenge. Make sure the files are in JPG format, 72dpi and AT LEAST 600×600 pixels in dimension.
4. To better track the designs, please name your submissions as follows:
JohnSmith_typeofambigram_Submissionnumber.jpg
5. When emailing your entries to challenge@ambigram.com, it is imperative that you do the following.
a. Put “Ambigram Challenge 16 or ACAC16 in the email subject line.
b. Email your ambigrams as attachments and NOT embed them in the body of the email.
Otherwise, it can be easy to lose track of which design belongs to which artist, especially if we get a lot of submissions.
Deadline
All artwork will need to be submitted by midnight on Sunday, December 18th, 2011 to qualify. Email your designs to challenge@ambigram.com . The contest is open to everyone, whether or not you have participated in the past, so give it a shot!
The results will be published on December 23rd, 2011.
News and Updates
While we are waiting for the Holiday Challenge, we will have several Quick Draws, Interviews and a few other fun articles. After the Holiday challenge ends, we will take a quick break for the holidays, but will resume full-scale operations during the first week of January 2012.
Wow! I’m really honored to be in the top five!
Question – if we have a holiday-themed ambigram already, but want to improve it for this challenge, does that count against the typical “entries must be created for this contest” rule?
thank you everyone and thumbs up to johan skyling
I am very pleased with the result and very happy to see one of my submissions in the top5. But it would be a real challenge to at least give some competition to Johan. He is simply amazing!!! And talking purely from an ambigram point of view, ‘The witching hour’ is the most beautiful and the best ambigram in this challenge. I thought Jennifer’s ambigram could have taken 4th place for a very refreshing way of presenting an ambigram. Overall it has been very pleasing.
And what does ACAC16 say??? “you are allowed to submit up to 4 entries”!!! Who will aim for 4 submissions
Johan not only a ambigrammist, he is an awesome artist.
Johan is one of the guys who encourage us to improve our work.
Those are all really nice ways of saying “Johan is really intimidating.”
Johan, your work is, as always, excellent
. You should put together a tutorial or something on how you’re always so consistently awesome 
.
As always, Johan keep walking….. I agree with Cleber… Even if some ambigramists try to to find out and DO figure out perfect letter combinations, Johan’s work is over the limit. Just look at his submission. This could be submitted in a Halloween competition, in a Graffiti competition, in a Colour competition, in an element-applied competition, in a festival competition and so on… The meaning of the ambigram at its best!
@ all : I think we should try harder and harder so as to reach about 1/100th of the masters’creativity. (This includes John Landgon, Johan, Skott etc.)
I am honored to be born on the EXACT same day/year as Johan. No joke. Too bad he absorbed more juice into his right brain.
Great work to everyone else. There were great submissions here. The winners were very deserving. Guess I need to put on my
Who is Dan Adona Jr. ? All I know is that he is an amazing ambigrammist. Hope to see many more pieces of artwork from you in the future.
Robert/Sharath/Jennifer – Excellent work and presentation!!!
Nikita – Be a good judge and put your FridayThe13th where it belongs!!! (IN THE TOP 5) – I would pay to hear the comments if you did that.
Again, I was too busy working on a commission based ambigram project. Ambigrams of the band and band members of Radiohead. Just one more left in the quintet to do. http://www.customambigrams.com.
“…Guess I need to put on my hardhat if I want to ever participate in these challenges again. The bar doesn’t want to stop soaring” – - (SORRY)
Great work everyone. And if you think the challenges in 2011 were difficult, the first ACAC of 2012 will absolutely blow your mind!
Time for some statistics:
With this win Johan breaks a sequence.
1. He becomes the 1st person to win 2 consecutive ACACs.
2. He has now won most number of ACACs ( Total 4, going one step ahead of Sir John Langdon and Daniel Dostal )
Correct me if any of my statistics are wrong but I think they are correct.
Thanks Guys! I’m very happy. There were several awesome submissions in this round. My favorites were the other four in the top five. I really liked Nikita’s Friday the 13th as well.
I would like to invite you all to visit my facebooksite. Search for Sparris Design.
Cheers!
Johan
Wow! I think I’ll join! Do I have to reveal my name, though? I don’t want to….
CJ,
We’d love to have you participate. As for your real name, don’t worry. It’s between you, myself, and anyone else who frequents this website. So your secret will be safe
Sharath wrote:
———————————–
Time for some statistics:
With this win Johan breaks a sequence.
1. He becomes the 1st person to win 2 consecutive ACACs.
2. He has now won most number of ACACs ( Total 4, going one step ahead of Sir John Langdon and Daniel Dostal )
———————————–
Wow. That is a pretty impressive showing. You also forgot to mention that EACH of those winning designs is eligible to win an Ambigrammy Award as well.
Nikita – What are the rules on the Ambigrammy Awards? Can a single person win more than one? Could one person get the First, Second AND Third place Ambigrammy Awards? Would anyone ever come back for another ACAC after that?
Did he really just pass John Langdon and Daniel Dostal? I guess I need to go wake those guys up…
I would love to see full strength ambigrammists participating in ACACs… Would be a great learning for amateurs
I can’t wait to see all the entries you received for the Holiday Challenge!