This time around I tried my hand at some multilingual ambigrams. (In the past I've worked solely with the English language.[1]) For the first batch (yes, that means there are more to come) I turned to Thai. Since Thai is written in a different alphabet, this was doubly challenging. I originally wanted a Thai Blackletter font, since Blackletters are conducive to ambigrams in English, but I wasn't satisfied with any of the ones that I found.[2] Eventually I settled for a Thai font called DSN Orchid.[3]
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This first ambigram combines my name in English, Matthew, with its equivalent in Thai, แมทธิว (which is transliterated as Mæthṭhiw).[4] The alterations I made were generally minimalist, which was satisfying. I'm not completely happy with the way I included the letter h, though I'm not sure how to improve it.
The Thai equivalent of the name Ann is แอน (transliterated as 'Æn). I couldn't determine a translation for the Le[ah] part of Leann's name, so I went with เลอา (transliterated as Le'ā), which is the translation of Princess Leia's name from Star Wars.[5] Combining them gives เลแอน (transliterated as Le'æn). This one took a considerable amount of tweaking, so I suspect that the Thai reading is essentially illegible. But since I don't speak or read Thai, it makes little difference to me. To enhance readability, I created a color gradient to separate the tops of the letters from the bottoms.
I found three words for lily in Thai: ลิลลี่ (which is the name of the genus Lilium and is transliterated as lílálêe), กมล (which means "water-lily" or "lotus" and is transliterated as gàmon), and วิรงรอง (which is a lily flower and is transliterated as wírongrong).[6] I chose the last because it was the only one long enough to easily make into an ambigram with Lillian. Again I used a color gradient to improve readability.
Notes:
[1] You can see my other sets of ambigrams here and here.
[2] If you're interested in Thai fonts, www.f0nt.com is a huge resource. It's mostly in Thai, though.
[3] I found it here, but it's zipped as a .rar file. To open it I used a program called 7-zip, which you can download for free here. Unfortunately there are about 50 fonts in the zipped file and you probably won't want them all.
[4] I determined this using Google Translate.
[5] See http://th.wikipedia.org/wiki/เลอา ออร์กานา โซโล.
[6] You can check transliterations of many (but not all) Thai words at http://www.thai2english.com/online/dictionary/.
NOTE: to pause the animated .gif images, simply hit the ESC key on your keyboard. To resume, hit the refresh button on your browser.
This first ambigram combines my name in English, Matthew, with its equivalent in Thai, แมทธิว (which is transliterated as Mæthṭhiw).[4] The alterations I made were generally minimalist, which was satisfying. I'm not completely happy with the way I included the letter h, though I'm not sure how to improve it.
The Thai equivalent of the name Ann is แอน (transliterated as 'Æn). I couldn't determine a translation for the Le[ah] part of Leann's name, so I went with เลอา (transliterated as Le'ā), which is the translation of Princess Leia's name from Star Wars.[5] Combining them gives เลแอน (transliterated as Le'æn). This one took a considerable amount of tweaking, so I suspect that the Thai reading is essentially illegible. But since I don't speak or read Thai, it makes little difference to me. To enhance readability, I created a color gradient to separate the tops of the letters from the bottoms.
I found three words for lily in Thai: ลิลลี่ (which is the name of the genus Lilium and is transliterated as lílálêe), กมล (which means "water-lily" or "lotus" and is transliterated as gàmon), and วิรงรอง (which is a lily flower and is transliterated as wírongrong).[6] I chose the last because it was the only one long enough to easily make into an ambigram with Lillian. Again I used a color gradient to improve readability.
Notes:
[1] You can see my other sets of ambigrams here and here.
[2] If you're interested in Thai fonts, www.f0nt.com is a huge resource. It's mostly in Thai, though.
[3] I found it here, but it's zipped as a .rar file. To open it I used a program called 7-zip, which you can download for free here. Unfortunately there are about 50 fonts in the zipped file and you probably won't want them all.
[4] I determined this using Google Translate.
[5] See http://th.wikipedia.org/wiki/เลอา ออร์กานา โซโล.
[6] You can check transliterations of many (but not all) Thai words at http://www.thai2english.com/online/dictionary/.
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