John Moore

It is interesting to create ambigrams; you really do not know what will be the end result, multiple transformations happen to the pair of endless decisions to be taken in the march, you often insists on finding a solution, but it happens in ways often not anticipated, and in most cases, it is usually always the simplest one that you could have imagined. Create an ambigram is to enter a jungle and find the most unexpected places.

Sketches

Final

Vasileios Stergioudis

While the requirement for this Quick Draw was only one ambigram, Vasileios went above and beyond the call of duty and developed four ambigrams!

At first, I tried deliberately to do a one-by-one letter combination to form HighVoltage. The central O matched perfectly! The G-A combination was relatively easy to do, but the rest (H-E, I-G, T-H and V-L) was a challenge. I had to come up with an idea that could fit them all. So, I set that every letter would be consisted of two stems and some points for the letters H, E and A. T and L were a big problem though. In the vector format I designed a few versions and I chose a round format instead of an angled one. T exceeds top line and L is an upside down V (like a lower case L). The horizontal bar of T is now a replaced by a giant battery, expressing the meaning of the words. The colours had to be reddish and yellowish, just like a battery charging up.

Sketches

Final

I tried to draw two different mirror ambigrams, one for every word. The two Hs in High were perfect. After some sketches, the IG seemed beautiful I think. V would mirror as an E, G as an O and LT as a lowercase A. I used an element, a little dot, in every letter so as to achieve it.”Sketch”Here is the final version. The stem of G in “High” forms a battery. These things (grey in coloured version) are outcome of my handling to IG and the oblique angle of T which left an empty space that I had to fill. As for the star, I don’t know why I drew it, it just came to my mind it had to be there.

Sketches

Final in black & white

Final in color

I decided to do a two-words ambigram, that is both “high” and “voltage” would return to themselves. “High” was pretty easy and would put as a background. Time for voltage: V would turn as an lower case E. O would form the bowl of G. L and T would form an lower case A. The tail of G would also form the horizontal part of T. Moreover, the tops of L and T would form the shape of a battery, idea that I didn’t eventually follow. I wasn’t pleased with “High”, so I’d prefer to try something different. Then I thought of Origami… what if I would fold the paper and read “High”? Therefore, I designed some lightnings as a background. The four corners (between little lines) now form “High”. The top and bottom two vertical lines must touch each other and the horizontal as well.  

Sketches

Final 1

Final 2

[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.]

“Say No To Simple Ambigrams” Submissions

“Say No To Simple Ambigrams” Poll

As this is the first time we are introducing audience voting, we would like to clarify a few details about the process. So, please read below, and then proceed to the poll to vote!

1. This is the first time we are trying to implement a poll for the challenges. Please understand that we may run into some difficulties, software related or otherwise. Should that be the case, give us some time to work out the kinks. It will be worth it, we promise!

2. Audience voting will not automatically be used for every ambigram challenge. As stated above, we are trying this out for the first time, and we’ll see how it all works out.  Then and only then we’ll decide if the audience voting is going to be a permanent fixture or not.

3. The poll will be open for two weeks. After two weeks, it will be closed and the final winner will be ‘announced’, although since everyone will be able to see the poll, not much announcing will be necessary!

4. You are allowed to vote for the top 3 ambigrams, so use your 3 votes wisely.

Please place your votes below.

Oh, before we forget…a big announcement will happen in the next day or two. Keep an eye out for it, for when it does happen, the “Say No To Simple Ambigrams” results will move to the news section and the new announcement will become the feature article.

Julius Siregar

Image 1

Image 2

Image 3

Image 4

Image 5

Image 6

Final

Suhas Shetty

Image 1

Image 2

Image 3

Image 4

Image 5

Final

Lucifer – The Satan;BLACK and RED-Those were the colors which jumped into my mind the instant I saw this word.The final picture was forming in my head-the wings and the sword.I knew how I wanted it to be!I dived into the design to get a feel  of the letters . My hand sketches are shown in Sketch1 where I was just trying to get a good readable design.It also has a rough draft of the final ambigram I had in mind.I have to admit I do prefer using design tools (read Inkscape ) like many others.The final product though I feel is still largely subject to the designer’s creativity and ingenuity.

About the word itself -By quickdraw standards I was surprised by the number of letters in it..!!’L’ and ‘R’ I felt, were natural counterparts in more ways than one. The tail of  the uppercase ‘R’ went along with the design and the rest of it matched with ‘L’. For the other letters U/E ,C/F I took several approaches. The lowercase ‘u’ without any change could be made to look like an ‘e’ if designed smartly. The ‘c’ I thought could be placed on a platter, which would help build an ‘f’ in the other direction.I started experimenting with some basic upper case designs(Sketch 2 and Sketch 3), and then went to lower case(Sketch 4 and Sketch5).I was trying out various combinations for U/E,C/F. I was pretty happy with the readability of sketch 2,5. I knew the final version had to be in uppercase to really bring out the word in its ‘deadliest’ form. I went with the left half of ‘U’ for ‘E ‘and the right with ‘F’ .A part of ‘F’ was also aided by ‘C’. The sword as ‘I’ seemed to fit perfectly in between. The head and the horns alongwith the colors went very well with the theme.The ones with keener eyes would also have noticed the center satan ambigram.

Overall the design process was a very gratifying experience, additionally because the final version is very close to the way I envisioned it.Hope I have done justice to the letters..and pleased him..Lucifer-The Satan !!

Dear Julius and Suhas, thank you for participating! The next pair will be notified shortly.

There is something on the horizon at Ambigram.com. Something good is coming…something exciting…something sensational! Care to guess what it is? Post your guesses here…and the closest guess may win something!

Lei Arambala

Sketches 1

Sketches 2

Digital rough 1

Digital rough 2

Digital rough 3

Final ambigram

HEPHAESTUS. When i received the word, i imagine the word from my mind first..i started sketching the next day, the first letter H i got to tackle that with letter S..but I’m not satisfied because for me it doesn’t look like S when reverse and it’s not readable with H so, i skip ‘H’ and ‘E’ and try the P to ST..its to tricky because i combine ST to come up with one letter and thats P. then for my middle letter i mixed the ‘H’, ‘A’ , and ‘E’…

Then i go back to the first letter ‘H’ i got a trouble with that because i cant tackle that with the ‘S’..it took me a lot of sketch then i tackle that with the letter ‘E’ to came up with letter ‘U’ and ‘S’ for the last part of the word. In image 1 was my few sketch. in image2 was the result how i tackle the word. Then i started to edit that on my computer unfortunately my PC doesn’t have Photoshop or ink scape so i used MS paint. In image 3 I edit the linings and the color of the word. But I’m not happy with my combination of letter ‘S’ to came up with ‘P’ so i edit it again as you can see in image4, in image5 was the final result but still i edit again so it came up with image 6 and thats the final design. I hope you enjoy my design!

Sam Alfano

Sketches 1

Final ambigram

I’m rather new to ambigrams so I don’t have a tried and true procedure for creating them. I usually sketch the name/word in lower case letters, find the center, and start from there. I tend to bounce around trying different letter flips until something starts to click.

The first challenge was an H-S flip. I fiddled with that awhile, originally with a rounded S, then opted for some straight lines to better define the H. The E-U flip works, but at the expense of the E. Oh well! One thing I’ve noticed designing ambigrams is that quite often the letters are very obvious to me, but not to other people. Ambigram designers definitely see though a different set of eyes

The P-T flip might look better with a smaller loop forming the P. When it becomes the T the loop seems inappropriately large. Hmm…maybe I’ll work on that later. Sooner or later I have to call it quits as I could spend countless hours tweaking and adjusting.

After I nailed down the basic design I shot a photo with my iPhone and imported it into Adobe Illustrator CS5 where I traced my pencil sketch using the pen tool. Mastering Illustrator’s pen tool is an extremely important step in becoming proficient with this great software.

Since Hephaestus was a god of artisans, sculptors, metals, and fire, I gave his name the royal treatment with sculpted gold scrollwork on a golden background and fiery red lettering. I’m a hand engraver and illustrator by profession, and designing ornamental scrollwork is a specialty. The completed vector illustration was done entirely in Illustrator. There are many advantages to creating vector art, the main one being that it’s infinitely scalable without quality degradation…but that’s another subject.

Dear Lei and Sam, thank you for participating! The next pair will be notified shortly!

Jennifer Thorne

Sketches 1

Sketches 2

Digital rough 1

Digital rough 2

Digital rough 3

Final ambigram version 1

Final ambigram version 2

John Kane Smith

Sketches 1

Sketches 2

Digital rough 1

Digital rough 2

Final ambigram

(Sketch 1 & 2) When I first got the assignment my brain almost exploded. I didn’t see a single character that resembled its opposite so I knew this was going to require some kind of combination. To avoid M/S in particular. M/IS would’ve put an O in the center, but it didn’t work well for the rest of the word… M/LIS definitely seemed like the best option. I sketched lettering styles while trying to solve the ambigram. When it started to read and I was happy with where it was going I moved to the computer.

(Digital rough 1) A lot of ambigrams are very scripty and fluid so I wanted to do something rigid and different. Drew the type in Illustrator and intensive tweakage followed.

(Digital rough 2) I slept on it and realized the O’s from the E/O and R/O combinations should be more legible, which led to a study of those letters, convincing me the design required the cryptic quality I was battling.

(Digital rough 3 / Final) This was the definitely the hardest ambigram Ive taken on and in the shortest amount of time. All in all Im happy with how things turned out and cant wait to see what my opponent came up with. Thanks to Ambigram Magazine for including me!

For the latest Quick Draw, Sharath Kumar and Homero Larrain were asked to take on the word perestroika. Keep reading to find out more about their process, results, and any other challenges they may have encountered! [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.]

Homero Larrain

At first, when I received this challenge, I thought this was a very cool word to work on. I always liked russian constructivist posters, but for some reason I’ve never done any ambigrams in this style, so first thing I did was a quick search for Russian posters for inspiration.

Sketches.

I experimented with some different styles, but I knew that in order to convey a soviet aura to the ambigram, I had to try to use capital letters with a mono-weight lettering style. Amongst other ideas, I experimented with using a reflected R, to give the design a Russian feeling. After some attempts, I thought that STRO was a good starting point. The trick here was one that many ambigrammists seem to use a lot: focus on the upper part of the word, because it features the most recognizable elements of the letters. That’s why that O (kind of) works, even if it’s still shaped as an S.

Image 1.

Then I started working on Photoshop. I wasn’t very happy with my first results; first of all (and probably the most important) this design was very difficult to read. I also wasn’t convinced by the letter height and spacing (like that tight ERE in contrast to that wide K), or by the shape of some particular letters (mainly the K). On my second attempt, I lowered the letters and modified the height of the middle bar of both E’s. I liked better how the K looked now, but the I looked like a reflected E. In a different context this might work, but in a Russian poster a reflected E is read as an E. Also, the P dindn’t convinced me either, and the first letter is, at least in my opinion, the most important one for the ambigram to work. If you can’t figure out the beginning of a word, it’s very unlikely you’ll be able to read it. On the other hand, if you can read the first half of a word, your mind is able to predict the rest of it.

On my third attempt I thought I was almost ready, but something was missing at the center of the word… I realized two things: the T would be easier to read if I extended its stem (also making the two R’s more consistent), and bringing back the dot of the I would help avoiding readers to see it as an E. In addition, these changes attracted the attention to the upper side of the design, helping the O to look as an O instead of an S.

Image 2.

Sharath Kumar

Perestroika! (restructure, rebuild), what an amazing word. As soon as I got the word I took my paper and pen and started looking for the combination I should go for. The word had ‘O’ in it. So I decided to choose the best letter to tackle ‘O’ with and to my look ‘e’ was right at the place. So, I decided to go with ‘T’ at center. ‘A/P’ solution is well known. I had tackled ‘R/S’ quite a few times. ‘er\ik’ looked to be little tricky but not too much. So, there was no blocking letter in the design and I had do give a nice design.

Image1 shows the initial few sketches on the paper. I decided not to go for all upper case or all lower case rule but to concentrate on the consistency of letters first. ‘E’, and ‘R’ were the repeating letters and I was converting them to ‘O’ and ‘ik’. I came up with the solution shown in image1 (half drawn).

Then it is to do with implementation. I use inkscape to implement. Image2 shows the imported picture on inkscape. Image3 is after completing the version1 of the implementation. Size of letter ‘e’ and ‘o’ were very small in size. So I had to arrange the letters to hide the awkwardness.

Finally I came up with image4. When I asked my friend to read it, he struggled to read it properly. It was disappointing to me but I had made up my mind that image4 is the final version. I gave some effects and drew the background to give a feel of what the word mean and my done with my final version image8.

I wasn’t too happy with the final version. Though I succeeded to maintain the consistency of letters to some extent, the overall feel wasn’t pleasing. ‘O’ had the feel of ‘a’ and ‘k’ wasn’t strong. So I started scribbling few more designs. Image5, image6 and image7 are the outcome of it. I was satisfied with image7 and hence decided to submit them. Image8 still remains my final version to maintain the true spirit of Quick Draw.

Image 1.

Image 2.

Image 3.

Image 4.

Image 5.

Image 6.

Image 7.

Image 8.

Dear Homero and Sharath, thank you for tackling such a challenge word and making another Quick Draw a success! The next pair has already been notified…

Ed Xander

Sketch1 – Initial playings

Sketch2 – Idea development

Sketch3 – Sidetracking

Sketch4 – Final idea development

Sketch5 – Final idea, hand drawn

Design1 – Final design using inkscape

Design-chain – Chained version of final design

My initial sketches consisted of (as usual) playing around with letter combos, looking at what options there are for different styles of ambigram and in this case seeing looking for the best way to combine the multiple words in the phrase. I generally keep playing until something leaps out at me.

Ryan McCourt

Figure 1 (The well-known Saul Bass poster for Spartacus)

Figure 2

Figure 3

Figure 4

Figure 5

At first, I thought IAMSPARTACUS simply could not be rendered in an ambigram I could be proud of. Sacrificing word spacing, to my mind, would be too great an obstacle to legibility: never mind the improbability of transforming a curvaceous “S” into a straight and narrow “I”, and without a thought to any of the other odd letter combinations. I figured It HAD to be broken up into separate words if it was going to have any chance at real success. The initial “I”, by itself, was a natural ambigram, and “AM”, it seemed, could probably be worked out easily enough, and “I AM” together might work out ok (which is what I ended up doing), which left SPARTACUS to be dealt with on its own. Obviously, that word was going to be considerably easier to deal with, with each S switching places, a lower case T in the centre as the pivot point, and the rest being fairly conducive to transformation ( I hoped).

At this point, I had to switch from mental to physical visualization, and knew I had a font (“Cleopatra”) that would likely be perfect for the subject matter. I searched online for a picture of the Saul Bass poster for the film, and typed my words on it. The typeface matched fairly well (fig1), but it occurred to me I could perhaps work with the poster image itself, and the lettering on it, to give it some of the style of the film design. I tinkered with the poster image in Photoshop to come up with this design (fig2).

I thought the daggers helped give a reason for the off-kilter A and the mysterious chunk floating in the C. This seemed pretty successful to me for a first sketch, but I still had a week remaining, so I figure I should try some other designs out.

Going back to the Cleopatra font, I worked with a similar layout of the words to form this design (fig3).

It looks pretty heavy metal. Time for a beer, and some critical appraisal… I think this design is working better than the first one, though they’re very similar, the A-C and R-A flips seem better now. The clustered, overlap effect has some advantages, I think, but it feels too stiff… I’ll rough it up a bit, and add some graphic elements. (fig4). Ooh, maybe too rough.

“I went back to the first design, and played around with it to come up with what might be my best version… so I’ll quit while I’m ahead (fig.5).”

Oh well… Looking forward to your feedback, and to seeing the attempts of fellow ambigraphers. (Ambigrammists maybe? )

p.s. No paper was harmed in the making of these designs.

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A big thanks to Ed and Ryan for taking on the challenge of the first ever ‘phrase’ in Quick Draw! The next pair has been notified, and the next Quick Draw may restructure your views on Quick Draw!

Jen Winklepleck

What I do to start every ambigram is write the word/s in both capitals and lowercase letters on top of each other.  I can look for similar patterns between letters this way.  I pick out which ones will definitely work and then see what letters are harder to transform.  With SUPERHEROES, I only had issue with the U/E combo.  I went with the initial sketch, but wasn’t pleased with the U representing a capital E….and a bad one at that.  After sitting on the idea for a couple days, I decided to try a 90 degree rotation with the U/E instead of 180 degrees.  This seemed to work out better than what I had done at first.

Anoop Pai B

Image 1

Image 2

Image 3

Image 4

Image 5 – Finished Ambigram

Bastian Pinnenberg

After I received the E-Mail containing the word for my challenge, i got pretty thrilled. Casablanca? Great word, great movie! Mystery ‘opponent’? Thriling! So I immediatly started scribbling:

My solution was pretty clear from the start: The ‘CA’ at the beginning of the word would have to symetrical to turn into the ‘CA’ at the end. Which did not leave much room to play with the other letters. The main problem was ‘B/LA’ combination. The ‘L’ hat to keep it’s own characteristics but form the curvy part of the ‘B’.

Next I did a clearer sketch of the letters, scanned it and started drawing the lines in Illustrator:

I started experimenting with a graphical element and was pretty content with the result. Until I showed it to a colleague and asked him if he could read the word. The answer was ‘Something with a ‘d’ at the end?’. I  had to rework the letters!

I added some angles to the ‘C’s and straightend the design a little bit. Now it was much easier to read. I added some inner lines and was very pleased with the outcome.

Photoshop-Time! I wanted the final image to have a nice black and white/film noir feeling and to look like a name plate. Add some smoke and voila:

And that’s it.

I really enjoyed working on this challenge, especially because I didn’t do so much ambigramming during the last months, and I am looking forward to see the results of my ‘opponent’.