John Landon is a professor at Drexel University. He and Brown have something very much common. According to Brown, an interest in code-breaking and covert government agencies led him to pen his two best-selling novels. Langdon has made a career of creating, and teaching how to create symbols and "ambigrams." An ambigram is a design of a word that can be read both rightside up and upside down. An example of one of Langdon's ambigrams can be found on the cover of the first edition of Brown's novel Angels and Demons. On the Acknowledgments page, Brown calls Langdon "one of the most ingenious and gifted artists alive"¦ who rose brilliantly to my impossible challenge and created the ambigrams for this novel."
A logo designer, Langdon created the logo for the Depository Bank of Zurich in the upcoming DaVinci Code film starring Tom Hanks opening in May. Langdon has designed credits for the movie, but doesn't know yet if they have made the final cut. He has also allowed them to use some of his other ambigrams as hidden codes in paintings that appear in the film.
Brown's father had bought Langdon's first book Wordplay and introduced ambigrams to Brown. So amazed was Brown by Langdon's ability to play with words and create ambigrams that can be read from left to right and upside down, that he called the Drexel professor to compliment him and they have since become friends.
Brown writes in the foreword of the second edition of Wordplay, "One evening in 1993, my father (a math teacher who delights in word play) excitedly called me into his study to show me what he called 'an utterly ingenious piece of art.' I hurried in, expecting to see some impossible Escher or baffling Dali. To my disappointment, the masterpiece appeared to be nothing more than a single word—Philosophy—rendered in an ornate, cursive script. 'Philosophy?' I said to my dad. 'So what?' With a patient smile, my father rotated the word 180 degrees"¦ turning it upside down."
Langdon has been creating ambigrams for more than 30 years. "In a sense, I invented them without setting out to do so," he said. Fascination with the yin and yang symbol was what sparked Langdon's interest to start manipulating fonts and scripts in order to make art from words. His undergraduate degree is in English.
"In the early 70s, I tried to do with words what Dali and Escher did with images, I invented (or discovered) what came to be known as 'ambigrams.' In 1980, I discovered that Scott Kim had invented them, too, almost at the same time. The editor who wanted to publish my ambigrams seemed to think that a book needed text as well, so I dragged my writer self out of the closet, and Wordplay was published in 1992 by Broadway Books," he said.
Langdon says that not all words he attempts to develop into ambigrams work. "About 50 percent of the words I have attempted failed," he said. But persistence is the key. He has gone back to words that frustrated him and eventually turned them into masterpieces.
A professor at Drexel for almost 20 years, Langdon teaches advanced typography and logo design to students in the Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design. Since 1995 he has taken his visual-verbal meditations and manipulations to canvas. His paintings involve symmetry and illusion, a bit of philosophy, and a few puns thrown in for good measure.
Langdon is a self-taught artist. After a few years at a Philadelphia design studio, he began freelancing in 1977 as a logo designer, type specialist, and lettering artist. Traffic to his web site brings requests from around the world for designs that range in nature from ambigrams and logos to tattoos. More information on Langdon and his work can be viewed at www.johnlangdon.net.
RSS