What are you meant to do when you wake up with an earworm already running riot in your drowsy and somewhat discombobulated brain? In this instance the words ‘After the rain come sun, after the sun comes rain again’ were on a constant loop. It took me a good while to place the lyrics as coming from Smoke City’s eventual hit ‘Underwater Love’ (it was released in 1994 but rose to prominence when it was used in a Levi’s advert).
In an attempt to exorcise my earworm I thought perhaps turning it into an artwork would help. It did. Thankfully the earworm no longer lives with me. Perhaps I’ve passed the earworm to you. I can only hope…
Created using the magic of spraypaint, stencils and and imagination on classy A2 Bockingford paper. Get in touch if you’d like to give her a new home…
Given that we’d already done a ‘Bristol’ ambigram design before Christmas I thought it only fair to get Brixton in on the action. Knowing my current proclivities if I did a load of them they’d all have stripes on them so I limited myself to just two versions for now. One with stripes, obviously, and one with a wavy patterned design. In all fairness I’d probably have to respray the blue and grey one if anyone wanted it as my favourite part, the Ace of Aces logo bit, hasn’t really come out very well but I thought I’d wait and see if there was any interest first. They’re A2 in size and I’d also be happy to re-do with any particular background colourways as requested if anyone felt so inclined as to ask. So there you have it.
As a side note if you’re not familiar with Ram John Holder’s song ‘Brixton Blues’ then I suggest you get yourself to Youtube pretty sharpish and give your ears a little treat.
After coming up with this ambigram design (which reads the same upside down) I showed it to the other half of id-iom who was a little perplexed as to what it said. After bringing the debate to a wider audience on Facebook it would seem that I opened a tin of worms as it’s apparently not at all clear what it says and I had numerous different answers as to what it might be.
I realise I could tweak the image to make it less vague and ambiguous but I decided I quite liked the idea that it wasn’t entirely decipherable and was more like trying to decode graffiti tags so decided to run with it. To celebrate the various different answers I received I’ve come up seven different versions of the design and each one has been titled in dymo letters with one of the guesses. It’s pretty plain to me what it says but then I guess perception is in the eye of the beholder so I’ll leave it up to you to decide.
They’re on A2 paper and made using the magic of stencils and spraypaint. The ‘Ace of Aces’ bit is pretty cool if I do say so myself. Drop me a line if you’re interested (or confused).
Lord knows I love an ambigram (a word which can be read upside down). I think I’m somewhat obsessed with them if the truth be told. I’ll shoehorn one into any piece given half a chance. Anyway, I already digress. If you’ve seen Sons of Anarchy (which, if you’re unaware, is a series about gun-running biker gangs in California) then you’ll probably know that ‘meeting Mr. Mayhem’ is a club euphemism for killing someone. If you haven’t then now you do.
Now, I’m certainly not advocating violence of any kind but it got me to thinking about Mr Mayhem as a kind of mysterious character rather than a euphemism. And here he is. Resplendent with his ‘Mayhem’ ambigram. To me he’s like a dapper English gent version of Winston Wolfe from Pulp Fiction. Except he puts people into sticky situations rather than helping them out.
He’s lasercut on wood then hand painted with the addition of crystal resin and is 39 x 27cm in size. Drop us a line if interested. As a side note I was considering mentioning the documentary ‘All This Mayhem’ somehow but failed to fit it in. If you haven’t seen it then you should. It starts off as one thing and ends as quite another.
I’ve had Phil Collins on my mind a little too much recently. It is entirely inexplicable. So today’s piece, with its Collins inspired title, seems particularly fitting. We’ve used this image before in for a limited run of six A2 pieces (there’s still a couple left!) but today’s laser cut mini edition comes in at just 10cm x 7cm and has some magnets fitted on the back for easy placement.
Anyway today’s piece is trying to express that duality that is contained within us all. Whichever aspect is on top doesn’t negate the fact the flip side still exists. Personally I think the key to happiness is trying to minimise the difference between the two. But maybe that’s just me. Anyway, I just love to get ambigrams into our work if I can and I think I’ve outdone myself with getting the angel/devil ambigram involved in a piece where it actually makes some sense. As I’ve put it on there twice (but flipped one of them) it reads the same whichever way up you have the picture so it’s like two for the price of one…
People are far more complicated than they generally realise or would lead you to believe. From the quiet unassuming man who sits opposite you at work but is, surprisingly, the life & the soul of the party come the weekend to the closet racist who you’d have thought loves everyone when, in fact, the opposite is true. In Japan they have the concept of honne and tatemae which are words that describe the contrast between a person’s true feelings (honne) and the behaviour one displays in public (tatemae or ‘facade’). Unless you get to know someone very well it’s rare to know both sides fully but they still remain flip sides of the same coin.
Anyway today’s pieces are trying to express that duality that is contained within us all. Whichever aspect is on top doesn’t negate the fact the flip side still exists. Personally I think the key to happiness is trying to minimise the difference between the two. But maybe that’s just me. Anyway, I just love to get ambigrams into our work if I can and I think I’ve outdone myself with getting the angel/devil ambigram involved in a piece where it actually makes some sense. As I’ve put it on there twice (but flipped one of them) it reads the same whichever way up you have the picture so with a bit of crafty framing you can flip it round whenever you want to give your room a bit of a change so basically it’s like two pictures for the price of one. Bargain or what? Anyway if enough of these sell and there is a clear preference on colour scheme I may go ahead and get a print done. I could even tailor the colours to personal preference if there was enough interest. Oh and did I mention there’s gold leaf of some kind on there too? This one’s got it all. Just drop us a line if interested…
Cheers
id-iom
PS I’ve also stuck an earworm in for the title. This pic really does have it all now.
A few hundred years ago a chump was a thick lump of wood. Nowadays we know a chump to be someone who is foolish or easily deceived. Without too much imagination you can see how one meaning has morphed over time into the other. The man in our picture is a chump. In fact he is the King Chump, Mr Mitchell T Lavin from Cincinnati, Ohio who originally sent the ‘chump’ ambigram used in this picture along to The Strand magazine in 1908 with the proviso:
‘I think it is the only word in the English language which has this peculiarity (being an ambigram that is), and therefore hope you will consider it worthy of insertion in your ‘Curiosities’ column’.
What a chump. You can make an ambigram out of practically any word. I should know. I love those suckers. On another note now I’ve got my hands on some marbling inks nothing can stop me! Instant backgrounds!
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