Target

Legion

A new Ambigram

Throttle

The last post has been a total success. John Langdon, Co-inventor of the concept of ambigrams, the man who drew ambigrams for the famous novel 'Angels and Demons', Man behind 'Illuminati', commented on my previous blog. These images inspired me to dive into the world of ambigrams . It was truly an honor.

These comments made me create ambigrams with more vigour and enthusiasm. Now-a-days i am always on the lookout of words that are probable ambigrams. So you guys may see many more ambigrams coming your way.

Today's word is 'Throttle'. I had thought of this word a long time back. I had also created a hand made sketch of the word. But back then i had little knowledge of scanning and editing my ambigrams. So the Ambigram never got created. Yesterday as i was just thinking of words, the word Throttle crawled in my mind and i started drawing right at that moment.

The design circled mainly on the same path as the previous thought process. If you see at the word 'tt' make a 'h' and 'r' can easily made to look as 't'. 'o' being an natural just fitted in all the words. The challenge here was 'T' and 'E'. It was a bit difficult for me to fit these two words. I made a lot of combinations. But then finally narrowed it down the following design which looks pretty much attractive and readable. I made the 'o' look a bit different the original ones and thought of connecting it with 't' which was good. I scanned the image,painted it paint and then traced it in inkscape. This was quite easy because editing the traced image in inkscape is a tedious job. So this was quite easy and quick.

The next job was the colour thing. I wanted to make it look like a fiery word. It was not easy to put fire inside the word, so just put red and yellow colours at the end of the design. These colours complement the words meaning.

Its very important that you people keep on commenting on my blogs. They are very important for me. The legibility and the readability can be tested when many people try to comprehend the word.

So please keep commenting and checking out my blog.

Wizard

Harry Potter mania is gripping the whole world and i am not left out of that.This because of the epic finale that realised last Friday. J.K.Rowling has put a lot of effort in writing all these books and they are truly awesome. The suspense and the gripping story is so awesome that you just cant put down the book. Hats off to her.

So to add to this Potter mania i wanted to do an ambigram. Harry,Ron, Hermoine would be my probable candidates but I wanted it to stand out. Then I thought of the wizard and here i am with my design. I had thought of this word long back but for some reason i was not able to make it happen. Everything has a time and the time for 'Wizard' is now.

Let me run through the design process of this ambigram. 'D' and 'i' and make a 'w'. But the catch here is that it should not look like and 'm', it should look like 'rD'. So the work was cut out for me. No ready made fonts were useful. But yesterday as i was in the midst of all my office work it struck me. These days i carry my drawing book with me to the office. The 'r' and 'D' were perfectly fitted. It was the turn of 'iza'. Now here z is a natural ambigram so it would be ideal if we keep its design as it is. But somehow 'i' and 'a' were not fitting well. So why no combine 'i' and 'z' to make it an 'A'. This way preserving the 'z'.

Attractiveness was one of the most important factor of this design. The style must be consistent with the word. So i need to draw really curvy stuff and make it an medieval look. I think i have fairly achieved it. Next was the wand thing which made it look more attractive and meaning full. I drew the design traced it and converted it using the combination of GIMP and Inkscape. Fine tools. I browsed through the net and thought of putting sparks at the end of the wand. So thats that..

Let me tell you my friends, if you want to be a perfectionist you have to practice. The old saying is truly correct 'Practice makes man Perfect'

Comments are eagerly eagerly awaited

Online

A year back I had decided to create theme based ambigrams and present them in front of you. 'Atom' was the first theme based ambigram and people appreciated it. After that i created hardly two more theme based ambigrams and i stopped doing it. Today i have come up with another of the theme based ambigram for the word 'Online'.

'Online', the word caught my attention when i was chatting on gtalk one day. I just saw the green dot and my name stating that i am online. So I thought why not make a ambigram out of it. I wanted use that green dot to gain more leverage on the understanding of the design. I had decided to use the dot as part of the ambigram.

If you see the word, it is far more a natural ambigram. 'Online', 'N' and 'N' are natural ambigram and 'l' can be adjusted well to look like an 'i'. With a small adjustment 'e' can pretty well look like an 'o'. As i had decided to include the green dot, i thought of making the 'o' as solid green dot. But this would give away the 'e' and would need to be adjusted else where. I didn't want to disturb the natural ambigrams. So after some thinking i decided to make the 'o' as pacman design, A sector of the 'o' can be cut and the 'o' would look like an 'e'. After few adjustments the design looked satisfying and was completed in very less time.

I am thinking of creating ambigrams out of 'busy' and 'away' words which has some resemblance with the words and appearance on gtalk.

Your comments and suggestions are highly awaited.

Designs are created,presented courtesy Inkscape,illustrator and blogger.net

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.

Three Musketeers Part - II - 'aramis'

Life has really changed from the last post and what it is right now. Life has shown different colours from the time since last post. These three months has reassured me that life offers tons of learnings at every point of your life.


To continue with serious that i started on 1st of january 2010, let me put forward the second ambigram in the 'Three Musketeers series'. The word is 'aramis'. It is the name of one of the musketeers. The three musketeers has got a correlation with my life and this devoted to one of my closest person in my life. The three musketeers is related to my 2 friends and me. It was the best time that we had spend together.

The design took a long time to evolve. I had finalised on 3 designs but the designs lacked clarity. I have added a new step in the ambigram creation these days. I get the design scrutinized from
the third person. Perception of each human being is different because everybody is unique in this world and no person can be compared with the other because in turn you are direspecting both of them. My ambigrams are readable to me but they cannot be easily read by other people. The clarity of the design is the most important thing in the ambigram design.

The hardest part about this design was 'a' and 's'. This is the only reason i had to create 3 designs and had to settle down on the fourth. The word 'rami' are easy to convert to a ambigram. The design for these word was confirmed in the 1st version. I had searched a lot for the transformation of a to look as a s. But finally i came this transformation that i have user here. It actually fits well in this design. The cursive typecast makes it more attractive and readable.


So that the second part of the 'Three musketeers series'. The second part took a lot time to come up but i am going to complete the series very soon. So stay tuned for the next part in the series.

To say the least i am thankful to Inkscape and blogpost who gave me the opportunity to showcase this unique art.

atom : - A smallest particle

I was just wondering about the next theme based ambigram and no word, I repeat no word came to mind. I had announced about the theme based ambigrams in my last post but i soon realised that this was not an easy business.

I had juggled around with two,three words that were saved in my mobile. But i couldn't achieve what i wanted to put forth in front of you guys. After pondering for a long time i fixated on the word 'atom'.

I had saved this word courtesy 'wake up sid'.Now let me clarify what is 'wake up Sid', it is an Indian movie that had released last month. Ranbeer Kapoor starred with Konkanna Sen Sharma in the movie. Ranbeer had wore a t-shirt which had the cartoon character 'atom ant' printed on it. That is how i got this word.

I had no idea of making this word a theme based ambigram. I just completed the design of the word and just put the word atom in google search, and to my surprise i had found some good images that i can use for my design.Almost all the images had orbitals in it. I decided to use the 'orbitals' for my designs.

Let me first clarify what an orbital is.In physics, an orbital is where an atom revolves around the nucleus.

I tried to use the custom images from google but they had some shortcomings that I couldn't overcome. So i decided to make these orbitals myself. I used the circle feature in Inkscape and used the good old linked offset to give the design a different flavour.

The actual design of the ambigram was lot easier and took a very less time to complete. 'atom' - if u look at the design i have used the 'a' and 't' to make a 'm'. I had to make some modifications for the word 'a'. O is a natural ambigram so it was just drag and drop thing and the design was completed in minutes.

The later part ate almost an hour. I had searched for the orbitals but didn't succeed. I created the orbitals my self and added the atoms that you can see in the design.

The design looks pretty Ok. I must admit one thing to you all, i am awful at colour combinations. That's a disheartening yet it is true. But i am trying really hard to overcome this and i hope, i would improve on this front too. So that you guys don't feel that the design is tawdry.

Many thanks to inkscape and blogger.com. People please keep checking out my blog for new posts and your comments are welcome.