आदि అంతం (Aadi and Antham) the Alpha and the Omega, or the Beginning and the End. This ambigram is based on a simple aphorism of life that every phenomenon that occurs, is bound to pass, and inevitably gives way to something new, symbolic of the cycle of creation and destruction and then recreation. This is a perpetual cycle that is the basis of change, which keeps life interesting and continuing.
Concept: This ambigram is made by combining two different scripts: Telugu and Devnagri. In Devnagri the characters hang from शिरोरेखा (head line on top of the characters) while in Telugu they sit on a base line. The challenge was to combine these two different styles of writing and make them appear unified. The two words are related but are opposite in meaning. आदि & అంతం (Beginning and End) are thus chosen to make this figure and ground ambigram.
Initial Sketches: आदि (aadi) had a 3 letter count and అంతం (antham) had 4 letters in it. For this reason, the vertical danda ‘।’ which is an equivalent of ‘full-stop’ in Devnagri is used to fix the character count. Upon getting the right number of characters, the next step is to look at negative spaces to fit in the Telugu characters. As both the scripts have different styles of writing, a squarish form is chosen to make things clear. The space around ा (अ की मात्रा) and । (डंडा ) is effectively used to represent 2 ’o’ (సున్నాs). While the space around ‘अ’ and ‘दी’ is used to write ‘అ’ and ‘త’ respectively.
Final Output: The sketch is scanned and vectorized using Affinity Designer. To give a soothing effect, a cool colour is proposed. Additionally, as the words are related, a Monotone is used so that the association/ belongingness of a single family is conveyed.
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