Esther and Bud are Walt’s wonderful parents. The ambigram above was composed November/December 2008 as part of their Christmas gift.

My first ambigram, and my first attempt at re-creating it in Illustrator. I first tried my hand at ambigrams with our names a few months ago on a note card. That design was a little different than this one. Walter had scanned that original design into his computer and “outlined” the design with vectors in Illustrator, and it looked pretty good, but I wasn’t satisfied with the way the LT/SS looked. I’ve puzzled over it since then in my head, trying to come up with a decent workable solution.

I recently tweaked the design a bit on a notecard, and then used the “calligraphy brush” tool in Illustrator to try to recreate it in digital format. (Much easier than trying to scan it in and trace, especially since I never really do a “refined” sketch on paper… I’m not that good of an artist!)

I’m still not super happy with the LT-to-SS conversion. I fear the “T” might look more like an “L” than an “S” when it’s inverted, and I’m also worried that the entire “ss” design might not be very legible. Comments & ideas are appreciated!

Edit: Here’s the original sketched/scanned/traced design from a few months ago, for comparison: