Spots

Evolution and innovation are the key to success and progress. These two things are interlinked. Evolution comes with innovation and innovation come with evolution. Evolution is in connection with human kind since a very long time. We have been evolved from a very less thought power to the human beings with the best brains that you will ever find. These brains help in innovation and new ideas. So in a way as i said they are interlinked with each other.

The whole point of writing about evolution and innovation is that my designs have been evolved thought innovation. If you compare my previous designs to the ones that i create now, they have evolved over the period of time. They have been more polished and finished. As a part of innovation i have come with the 'theme based ambigrams', which were really different that those contempory ambigrams. This all has happened over a period of time. I have experienced both evolution and innovation through my designs and i am sure you might have experienced it too.

Today i would like to present in front of you a very different ambigram, spots. I was making an ambigram of the word 'sports', I had just finished the design and 'spots' clicked me. I decided to post this ambigram before i would publish sports. I had a clear and concise design in my mind right from the start.

If you look at the design it is pretty much simple. 's' and 's' are natural ambigrams. 'o' clubbed with 't' makes an inverted 'p'. So in a way it is natural ambigram. I did not invest much time in creating the final draft of the design.The alignment of the words is so crisp that the ambigram looks really nice.

The next which i did to add flavour to this design is i added effects. Viewers wouldn't have seen these effects before in my designs. Recently i have started using 'Adobe illustrator'. The tool is really great. It gives you more options to make the design attractive. I used the 'grains' effect to add those grains which look more like spots.I am yet to explore the complete functionality of the tool. I would really like to use the tool to the fullest.

So the effect helped me to present the word with a meaning, The spots in the design help in explaining the word. So it more or less like a theme based ambigram. I was very happy with the final outcome of the ambigram. My whole effort is to make the ambigram readable and attractive. Readability will improve with practice and experience. Tools like Adobe Illustrator help the designer add this facet to the design.

I would like to specially thank the Adobe team in making such a powerful tool. Thanks again.

Please post your replies and suggestions in the comments tab. Your feedback would be appreciated.

Mumbai

Nikita Prokhorov is an avid artist and an ambigramist. He was the person who was instrumental in letting me know about the tool inkscape . He has come up with a great site called http://www.ambigram.com/ . It is a very good platform for people who have artistic interests and are ready to jump into the world of ambigrams. It is an ambigram devoted site.

He is currently hositing ambigram challenges. So what is a challenge? A theme is announced on the website and depending on the theme the person has to come up with his own ambigram design. There was a particular challenge in which you had to submit an ambigram of a city you love the most. The Challenge deadline was already over, but to test my skills and creativity I thought of making an ambigram of the word ‘Mumbai’.

Why Mumbai?? Because Mumbai is the city which never sleeps, millions of people shift to Mumbai to try their luck. Personally I love Mumbai for its night life, marine drive, trains, cricket, fast paced life, unlimited eating joints, the monsoon, Posh localities diversity, the never say die attitude and millions of opportunities the city offers. So I thought of dedicating an ambigram for this amazing city.

I was just wondering from where to start. So I just wrote ‘mumbai’ the calligraphy pen on the pseudo drawing board provided by inkscape. Looking at the words the concept just flowed from the brain to the computer. This is a classic ambigram which has a lot of natural ambigramatic letters in it. ‘mumbai’, the ‘a’ and ‘i’ align themselves so well that when inverted they make a perfect ‘m’. The inkscape calligraphy pen was helping me in getting the results which I wanted. With some efforts I was able to complete the ‘a’,’I’ and ‘m’. The middle ‘m’ can be directly made an ambigram. I used the stroke of ‘I’ to make the ‘m’. 3 similar strokes of ‘I’ made a perfect ‘m’ which would look the same when viewed upside down.

The next challenge was the ‘u’ and ‘b’ transformation. This part of the ambigram took a long time to evolve. The absence of a stroke on top of ‘u’ was making it look as ‘h’ rather than ‘b’ when viewed upside down. I wanted to make the letter look same as the other letters in the word. I didn’t want to risk the readability of the ambigram. So it was very important the design should be complete in every sense. After a long time of doodling, changes, adjustments and some final touches the ambigram was finally complete. The satisfaction after the completion was just awesome.

Please post your comments and reviews. This will make me introspect and create better designs in the future. Thanks again to Inkscape and Blogger.

Tornado

We can feel the change in the climate. Temperatures are dipping down,blue skies are occupied by dense dark clouds,the surroundings are getting greener day by day.Most of us are eagerly awaiting the arrival of rains, few lucky have already got the taste of it. This is an ideal and perfect weather to sit back,relax,have a mug of hot coffee,probably music or a novel to go with it and just enjoy the awesome weather.
Yesterday when i published a post, i wanted to post one more ambigram. I was not getting to a word. As i was returning from my friends place this morning and out of nowehere the word tornado caught my attention. I was dying to get my hands on Inkscape.
The 't' and 'o' was the first challenge which i tackled on my way itself. I knew i had an 'o' on the other side so it was only a matter of adjusting the 't' besides the 'o' which was not a big issue.If you look at the design closely, I have made use of a single rectangle with curved edges to complete it. The 't' and 'o' forced me do the ambigram out of this single shape. This was required to make the design uniform and attractive.
The next test was to make 'rnad' to look as 'danr'. I first thought of using the small 'r' and 'd'. But the design was looking clumsy. So i thought of using the capital 'R' and small 'd'. The bottom stroke of 'R' was only required to be added to the inverted 'd'. The rectangles helped me here as the letters 'd' and 'R' were synchronous with 't' and 'O'.
If you look at 'a' and 'n' they are natural ambigrams. But the style of these letter is not helpful here. So i had to come up with a different design. After a lot of thinking and doodling, i decided to make use of the captial 'N' and capital 'A'. The rectangles helped to come with this design.I used the half part of 'N' to look like an 'A', thus making it in sync with the other letters. After few final touches and changes the design was complete. I want to check the readability of the ambigram so i asked my friend (yash) to view it. He intantly typed 'Tornado' and i was elated. Readability was scruitinized.
Making the ambigrams makes me so happy and when the person viewing it reads it, the feeling is just awesome. I would like to express my gratitude towards Inkscape and blogger who gave me the pulpit to help me reach the viewers.

Eagerly awaiting the comments.