Meet the Artist: Tiffany Harvey

Today, Ambigram.com is speaking with Tiffany Harvey.  Tiffany has been creating ambigrams for several years. Before her love for ambigrams became apparent,  she ran a patchwork clothing business and is now preparing to start screen printing her own fabrics.

Ambigram.com: Tiffany, thank you for speaking with us. I will ask you the same question that I ask everyone, yet the answer never gets old, because each time the answer is slightly different:

How did you become interested in ambigrams?

Tiffany: Like most people, I was first introduced to ambigrams through John Langdon’s work, but it was not from “Angels & Demons”. An online friend of mine was asked to be be in a book about words that are used as tattoos and posted a picture of the featured tattoo, Langdon’s mirror-image design of the word “Balance” (which she had permission to use). I immediately rushed over to Langdon’s site and was fascinated by the rotational designs. I’ve always been interested in calligraphy, word puzzles, optical illusions, and secret codes, so I had to try it out myself.

Ambigram.com: What was the very first ambigram you created? We’d love to see an example of it.

Tiffany: The first thing I tried was my last name, “Harvey”. Luckily, it was a very easy word to use! I drew it out on paper and then tried to draw it on the computer with my mouse, which is never pretty, but this was the basic design.

Once I started, I couldn’t stop!

Ambigram.com: You have a strong background in arts & crafts. How has that influenced your ambigram design?

Tiffany: I’ve always noticed a lot of cross over between different arts. When you are working on ceramics, you might use painting or carving techniques. I’ve used origami in resin pendants, stitched together paper on my sewing machine to create greeting cards, it all overlaps. In some ways, even the patchwork and the the embellishments I add to the ambigrams are similar. I was always trying to arrange the different fabrics in a way that looked random, but balanced, the same way I might layout stars and curls and dots around the letters of an ambigram. Developing an eye for details will carry through to any kind of artistic work.

Ambigram.com: Now, I have to ask this question. Aesthetically speaking, your ambigrams are spot on almost every single time. How do you create those perfectly matching curves, flourishes, and the rest of the intricate details that are such an integral part of your ambigram style?

Tiffany: I think repeating the same motif throughout the design can really help. If you look at fonts, you will see the same lines and curves appearing again and again throughout the letters. That is what creates the unifying style of the font. You can add a curl, or stick thin lines in among thick ones, but try to add them to the design more than once so that they become part of the overall style.

Ambigram.com: To follow up the previous question, how much of a factor does computer software play in your design? Do you create the complete ambigram using just paper/pencil  & then finalize it on the computer, or do you create very rough sketches and then develop the ambigram on the computer?

Tiffany: In the beginning, I did draw out the ambigrams on paper and scan them in to trace on the computer. I didn’t have a very good program to do this with, I was basically drawing with my mouse again, but I worked with large images so I could smooth things out easier.

Soon after that I was introduced to Inkscape, which is basically a free version of Illustrator, so that I could create vector images. Last year I got a Wacom graphics tablet, and have since then retired the scanner. I do still create a very rough sketch when a customer first contacts me, just to make sure ambigram is possible. I either create a more finished sketch on the computer, which is then re-worked in Inkscape, or use my rough sketch as a guide and lay out the ambigram from the font pieces of previous designs.

Here you can see it a little more step-by-step.

Ambigram.com: Are there any types of ambigrams you haven’t tried before that you’d like to design in the future? Have you ever designed any ambigrams in a different language?

Tiffany: I’m actually learning Japanese right now, and I’d love to create some bilingual ambigrams in Japanese and English.  These Chinese-English ambigrams are an inspiration.   I have created a few foreign ambigrams, though most of them use the Latin alphabet, so they are not very different from normal ambigrams in English, or some of the unusual names I get!

The most difficult foreign design I’ve done was a Russian ambigram in the Cyrillic alphabet, because I have no real concept of what makes the letters readable, or the different styles they can take on. I based my sketches on a cursive version of the alphabet I found online and sent the customer a few variations so she could pick what was most readable.

Ambigram.com: Are there any artists in the ambigram community that inspire you? Is there anyone whose work you follow really closely?

Tiffany: Of course, John Langdon was a big inspiration, and I remember looking at a lot of other work when I was first starting out. Now I think I tend to avoid others’ ambigrams, because I worry about being unintentionally inspired by other designs.

Ambigram.com: What is your own personal process for developing an ambigram, from start to finish? Where do you find your inspiration?

Tiffany: You can see a a lot of my step-by-step process in the above question about software. As far as inspiration, I think most of it comes from my customers. Sometimes the ambigrams are simply a matter of putting two names together with a font I’ve used many times before.

Other times the customers comes to me with layouts and embellishments I’ve never created before, a list of 10 fonts that I would not normally consider for an ambigram, or even ask for non-ambigram word art. The further I am drug out of my comfort zone, the more I start to worry, but the designs you struggle with are usually the ones you are most proud of in the end.

Ambigram.com: What advice would you give someone who is just starting to design their first ambigram?

Tiffany: Get a calligraphy book and practice writing a few of the alphabets. You don’t need to get really good at it (I certainly never was!), but seeing how the strokes repeat, and how the same letter can be completely different from one alphabet to the next, can really help you put together a readable design. Practice is also a big part of it.  The more ambigrams you draw, the more successful letter combinations you will discover and file away in your mind for future use.

Ask a friend if they can read your design, and what letters need more work. You already know what the word is supposed to be, so you need outside opinions. Also, small tweaks can really affect the readability of an ambigram, so don’t be afraid to play around with a hard-to-read letter.

Ambigram.com: One last question and then we’ll let you get back to work. If you had to pick one major corporation out there and redesign their logo as an ambigram, who would it be?

Tiffany: There have been several times when I have seen a logo and thought, “that would be pretty easy to turn into an ambigram”, and even considered making one up for fun and sending it to the company. Of course, now that you ask, I can’t remember any of them!

I think the most fun designs to create would be for a company that could really use the rotational aspect of the ambigram in their product, like on a watch or Ferris wheel, or across a tablecloth at a restaurant where customers could read the design from both sides.

Ambigram.com: Tiffany, thank you for the interview. We look forward to seeing more work from you!

——————————-

You can find more examples of Tiffany’s work at her web site at: http://wordillusion.com/