These are my new business cards. This is the end result of the “matt” ambigram I posted a little while ago. The idea is to be able to pick it up in any direction and read it. Both sides have the same design, one side has my name and number, the other has my email and url. I tried to get a get a picture that shows the spot UV varnish that makes a up a dot grid pattern on the card. These are some quick photos I took today. I’d like to get some more in some better lighting for my portfolio later.

Just having some more fun with ambigrams. This one is a rotational perceptual shift that reads graphic or design.  A bit cryptic, but it was fun attempting to find this solution.

I’ve been really fascinated with ambigrams recently. I’ve found them to be a great form of custom logo type with a set of really interesting challenges. The many restrictions in design end up forcing you to find creative ways to render letterforms to be legible in multiple directions and degrees of rotation. Anyway, I thought I’d try a mirror ambigram for ‘tumblr’ (in two weights).

I’m in the process designing some new business cards for myself so I’ve been playing with cards and thinking about how people interact with them. One of the first things I’ve noticed about when you hand someone a card is that you often times will hand it upside down and watch them flip it right side up to read it. It doesn’t seem like a huge problem, but what if it just weren’t a problem at all? Well, that’s what I’m wondering, so I started working on an rotational ambigram of my first name to perhaps solve that problem. A logo that can work any way you pick up my card.

After the initial idea I’ve discovered that it can be very tricky to make type work at 0° and 180°. In the variations above I’ve based some on Futura and some on a typeface of my own design. These by the way are just some of the variations that seem to work within the parameters (must be legible at both 0° and 180°). There have been numerous others that don’t work at all.

I’ll post the final business card here when the design is done and printed. I just thought the process of this design is starting to become really interesting, especially looking through the stages it’s taking to come up with a clean and functional ambigram for “matt.”