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Ambigrams

I went to Drexel University before I transferred to Arizona State. I was only there for a little less than two years, but I still remember a few of my teachers: A somewhat crazy, but awesome teacher named Mircea Popescu, who had a thick Romanian (I think?) accent, and who reminds me of the professor in The Cheese Monkeys by Chip Kidd. Jack Cliggett, part of the reason I left, because he threatened to fail me for who knows what reason anymore. I ended up passing, but had already made up my mind to leave. A teacher for my color theory class, who during a final review hated my project so much, he would reference it when critiquing the other students “Well, at least its not as bad as his.”

I remember, too, the head of the department, Sandy Stewart, who I had for a branding development class. She reminds me of Paula Scher and was infinitely nice, but scary intimidating too. Whenever I work on a logo, I hear her say something along the lines of “It must work in black and white before it can work at all.” in the back of my head. I remember her letting me go forward with some crazy logo involving a fly wearing glasses, and I remember when I was so flustered during a presentation that I started pronouncing silent letters (I said sub-tull instead of subtle, and felt like an ass) she laughed it off and calmed me down.

And John Langdon, who was just a really decent person, politically active, long-haired, kind teacher who invented really trippy typographic illusions called ambigrams. I enjoyed his classes a lot, and was sad to not get more opportunities to learn with him when I transferred.

It wasn’t until a couple years later, when I’d already left, that I came across his ambigrams in Angels & Demons by Dan Brown.

The Da Vinci Code had come out by then, making all of Brown’s books in demand. I’ve seen the elemental ambigram in plenty of places now, (Tattoos, drawings, etc. I think it was even on Angelina Jolie in Wanted, which means, by the Baconion laws of relation, that I’ve been on Angelina Jolie’s naked body. And now, so have you.)

I usually don’t hesitate to bring up that I know who made them, fully realizing he doesn’t remember some guy from 2 trimesters of freshman design studio, forever ago (when I was going by a different name, too), but pretending that he does, and feeling slightly cooler for having been in a few of his classes.

I was clicking through Stumbleupon, as I have started to do lately (It’s addicting) and hit on this gem from an article in an issue of Step from last year:

Typographic Dopplegängers

For more information about the ambigrams, check out his website too, http://www.johnlangdon.net/

Posted by md in art, interwebs, typography, writing on 3 August 2008. 

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