King

All my recent post have been on Facebook. I will try to post all my designs here. Thanks everybody for taking keen interest in my blog and designs.

yamnik-celebrating togetherness

This is a special gift for my sister and her husband on their marriage anniversary.

A very special thanks to Clayton Mabey who helped me to refine the design and make it more readable. The guy took just two minutes to rectify the design. He is a sheer genius.

A very happy anniversary to Yamini and Nikhil. Have a happy life ahead.

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

Evolution

Its been a long time since the last post. I have been very busy and didn't have a chance to create the ambigram. The Ambigram.com Ambigram challenges are keeping me in touch with the ambigram designs. These chaellenges are really awesome and it takes huge efforts to make it to the top 5. I have only participated in 1 challenge, not making it to the top 5 but lots to learn. Currently i am working on the new challenge. It has been fascinating to study the work of top ambigram designers via this ambigram challenges. Kudos to Ambigram.com team.

The word evolution was lingering in my mind since many days. I always keep a marker or a pencil with me so that i can try a word anytime it clicks to me. It helps a lot. This is a hand drawn design and then edited on a computer. The design was pretty straight forward. The main hick up here was to show 'v'. 'e' and 'v' can be clubbed to make an 'n'. This particular trick was pretty useful and the design was easily readable. Rest of the design was pretty simple.

The most important thing i wanted from this design was the readability, which i have fairly achieved. Other facet is the attractiveness, i am striving for this very hard. I am studying other designs from ambigramist. Through Ambigram challenges we get to learn a lot. I am also planning to learn typography to get better understanding of the type forms. One thing i have realised perfection is a process, you keep on learning newer things.

Thanks to inkscape and blogger.com.

Comments are highly appreciated.

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

Clayton - My Fellow Ambigramist

I have been itching to post a ambigram since a very long time. But apperently for some reason i was not able to post it. I have successfully created my first hand drawn, scanned and edited ambigram. People who are in my facebook friend list have seen the ambigram and have appreciated it. It is satisfactory to read positive feedback about my designs.Since then i have always craved for creating the hand drawn ambigrams instead of using inkscape and illustrator to draw it from the scratch. I use the tools for editing and adding some effects. The editing is a long process and i am getting a taste of it slowly.

Today i have come up with a ambigram of my ambigram mate 'Clayton'. I met Clayton on facebook and was instantly a fan of his designs. This guy is a creative genius. He has not only got custom ambigrams but also some ring designs of the words. Mind you creating ambigram rings is not easy and this guy creates them with awesome clarity and fascinating designs. We been friends since then and have been sharing a lot of stuff about ambigrams and art. It feels good to discuss about ambigram with a fellow artist.You can go through the following site to view his designs http://www.customambigrams.com/

The design took very less time to evolve. It took not more than 20 mins to complete the ambigram. The 'c' and 'l' can be connected to create a 'n' . 'o' can be transformed into an 'a' very easily. Now the 'y' can be made look as a 't' by writing the 't' in a cursive format and inverting it. The design was clear and concise. I had created this on a paper so the next task was to scan it and edit it. The editing part took a very long time. I made a lot of changes to the design. Every single time i was not satisfied with the design. But finally after a long time I was able to complete it and put in the front of you. Finally today it was ready to upload.

Thanks to blogger,inkscape and illustrator. Wonderful tools.

Eagerly awaiting your comments.