Entertain your eyes and mind with my ambigrams — a collection of words that can viewed from different perspectives.
ARCHIE: Sound on! 📣 Enjoy some colourful, comic book fun and an ambigram inspired by Archie Comics' lead character, Archie Andrews. He first appeared in December 1941 and the comic book, Archie, remains in publication to this day. I always loved the bright colours of the book and TV show, and feel this ambigram really captures that essence.
ANGLE: An isometric ambigram dedicated to Dutch graphic designer, Maurits Cornelis Escher, born in June 1898. His work features mathematical explorations of infinity, reflection, symmetry, perspective and tessellations, using shapes from nature as the basis of his designs. Escher was somewhat neglected in the art world, even in his native Netherlands. He was 70 before a retrospective exhibition was held — an inspiration in so many ways.
🔥 FURY: Inspired by the bushfires burning across Victoria, NSW, Queensland and California. While Prime Minister Scott Morrison doubled Australia’s coal exports, and President Trump pulled out of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, across in NZ Jacinda Ardern passed the Zero Carbon bill to reduce the world's temperature by 2050.
Vote for leaders who listen to climate scientists and fund research into sustainable energy sources. It's not too late to improve the world’s future 💚🌏💙
💐Inspired by the Baroque scrolls and lush foliage of HetLoo Gardens in the Netherlands, this new ambigram took on epic proportions. Initially, I had wanted to grow the ambigram into a patch of grass or garden but, realising it would not be long-lasting, I dreamt up a more permanent solution, a 40cm x 40cm quilled layout completed over three months.
Every morning, little by little, this unique project came to life in a rainbow of glorious colour, and was totally worth the effort! If you’re thinking of starting something but can’t initially find a way, keep looking & dreaming and another way will present itself.
GRIFFITH: My first ambigram in October 2018. I had always wanted to create an ambigram and, while in class at Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, the uni logo jumped out at me and I saw the letters as shapes that could be manipulated in Illustrator to make an ambigram.
HALEY: A botanical-inspired birthday ambigram for my friend, Haley, using Ecoline watercolours. The outline was sketched through a lightbox, then the pencil lines were erased after the watercolours had dried. Haley loved it!
JUNE: The first month of winter with birthstone, Alexandrite, a jewel named after Russia’s Prince Alexander II because it was first discovered on his birthday in 1830. With flashy flecks of green & red, which happened to be Russia’s military colours, it became their national jewel. I doubt they'd have liked it when, years later, someone renamed it Chrysoberyl!
STITCHES: embroidered 20x30cm panel
MOVIE WORLD on the Gold Coast reopened after Covid, so I made a new design to honour all the screams and dreams they bring to children of all ages each day. A fun place and a fun ambigram — it's a reflection!
💡🌇 Bright lights, big city. NEON.
NAILED IT: Lowercase 'n' is well-known in Ambigram World for easily creating the word 'it' when turned upside-down. I used that to my advantage and devised word combinations that would start with 'n' and end with 'it'. Nailed It sprang to mind. The critical factor was using a lettering style that allowed the E and I to be easily legible when flipped — italicised Bodoni was the answer. The concepting stage took approximately 2-3 months to get everything just right before buying the 6ml MDF, nails and embroidery thread. What do you think of the finished ambigram?
PRIDE: Representing all the colours of the rainbow. Early development stage shown.
SPINNER: logo design for the Spinner Frisbees project.
https://www.behance.net/gallery/105512585/Spinner-Frisbees
SQUIRES, made for a visit to Sydney's The Squire's Landing, James Squire Brewhouse, made using Ecoline watercolour. The full-size version was scanned to create travel-friendly bookmarks with a personalised inscription on the back.
SWING: (sound on) The world's first musical ambigram. This was a really fun to sketch and animate. It's accompanied by tunes from StepCat Music who remixed Duke Ellington's 1931 classic 🎵🎶🎺 This one's for the music lovers 🖤
VISION: inspired by Shinobu Ishihara's eye tests. First published in 1917, the originals test for red-green colour deficiency. This is the only ambigram I’ve designed where the illustration came first. I knew I wanted to use Ishihara dots, so brainstormed words such as 'eye', 'colour', 'Ishihara', and 'hidden', but 'vision' worked best and fit inside a circle easily.
💜 No matter which way you look at it, women make the world go around. To all the wonderful women in my life, this is for you, and for International Women's Day who do remarkable work in celebrating social, economic, cultural & political achievements of women worldwide. #IWD #internationalwomensday #eachforequal
WINDMILL: Sound on 📣 The inspiration and audio for Windmill came during a morning walk at Montville. A short distance past Flame Tree Hill winery, a windmill was rotating in the breeze. The audio is from that moment.
