Introducing.. the Downside-Up Circus!

Okay:  so both Tara and I have been horrible about blogging here all summer.. BUT that’s because we’ve both been up to our necks planning and scheming about our next major project:  the Downside-Up Circus.  Tara first told me of her idea for Downside-Up when we met up to travel in february.  At that point we didn’t have much besides the name, and that we wanted it to be community-oriented and awesome.

Throughout our many long train rides around Europe, we put our heads together to craft a mission statement, begin envisioning a summer 2010 tour (by bicycle!), and slowly start inviting people to the troupe.  All summer I’ve been working hard on a logo, visual identity, and website for the circus.  Tara and our other co-founder Victoria have been hard at work planning out finances, applying for grants, and other business logistics.

Probably most of our online energy these days will go into the upkeep of the Downside-Up website and blog, SO to find out about all our super exciting plans, head on over to www.DownsideUpCircus.org!

<3,

Molly

 

Ambiwho? Ambiwhat? AMBIGRAM!

One of Tara and I’s obsessions while traveling was creating ambigrams. They first came onto our radar when we were discussing the design possibilities for our next circus venture, Downside-Up. With a name like that, there are so many graphic possibilities, but I realized an ambigram would be the most apropos.

What is an ambigram?  According to Wired, ambigrams are the hottest trend in typography since Helvetica.  An ambigram is a word-image that can be read from multiple vantage points, most commonly by flipping it 180 degrees.  Ambigrams were popularized a few years ago by Dan Brown’s book Angels and Demons, which features several ambigrams as plot points, including this one to the left.

Now, the complex gothic ambigrams from Angels and Demons were the only ones I was very familiar with, and I believed them to be for advanced artists, mathematicians, designers – not for amateur typographers and doodlers like us.

ambigram in progress

NOT SO!  Ambigrams are fun AND easy to make!  Tara and I made loads of them on our many long train rides around Europe.  It’s pretty simple – I just start with writing the word below itself upside down.  Then look at each of the letter pairs, think about the key components in each letter necessary to define it, and start doodling different ways those letters can be combined.  Think about how to turn necessary letter strokes into decorative elements.  It also helps to consider both upper and lower case letters, I thought ‘SEATTLE’ would be impossible, until I thought to try it with lower case letters.I’m in the process of digitizing the Downside-Up ambigram for a logo now, but meanwhile here’s another one I’m working on.  Try making them sometime!  And don’t go looking for any lame ambigram generators on the internet – get out a pencil and pad and do it yourself.   It’s like solving a logic puzzle.

For more on ambigrams, check out:

http://www.johnlangdon.net/ – the website of the Prof who’s one of the leading ambigram scholars, he also made all the ambigrams for Dan Brown.

http://www.ambigram.com/ – online magazine about everything ambigram.

 

30 Things

In just over a week, I am headed to London to start my travels with Tara – we are going all over Europe and we are going to have crazy awesome adventures.  Please let us know if there’s anything in particular you think we must see or do while we’re there!  We’re going to be doing this thing called Help Exchange, where we’ll do volunteer work on farms, hostels, lodges, etc in exchange for room and board.  Hooray!

ALSO: check out the rockin’ website I have been working on for my talented friend Shira, who is currently on a national tour.

Here is a list I started working on a long time ago and just recently finished writing:

30 Things to do Before I’m 30
1. go on a cross country circus tour in a bus powered by veggie oil [check]
2. be published in adbusters
3. explore the grand canyon
4. spend one month entirely off the internet and computers
5. go on a flying trapeze
6. design a font
7. intern with mcsweeney’s
8. spontaneously travel with no plan
9. make a feature length documentary
10. write meaningful letters to all the people I admire
11. culture jam mill creek (my hometown)
12. seattle to portland (STP) bike ride
13. learn to juggle (seriously, with all the time I’ve spent around circus people, you might think I would be able to juggle by now, right?  no.)
14. learn a musical instrument
15. design an 826 publication
16. grow my hair out long enough to braid it
17. learn to swing dance
18. build or help build a treehouse
19. design a playground
20. plan a heist
21. make an elaborate meal using only things I’ve grown myself
22. win a baking contest with my muffins
23. teach graphic design with open source software to a community in need
24. design and publish at least 6 issues of a new magazine
25. go camping in the hoh rainforest, the oregon coast, and the redwoods with my friends
26. learn how to design websites well
27. acquire (and use!) a typewriter and a sewing machine
28. spend time in scotland
29. take beautiful portraits of everyone I know
30. open a café/bookstore/circus space/community media center/letterpress printing studio/bike shop/urban garden in seattle with all my friends!

 

Photographic Evidence

I was thinking yesterday how I really miss photography. From the time I was 8 till I was 16 or 17, photography was my MAIN thing, but the past few years it’s really taken a back seat to graphic design and video. So I went out and took some lovely photos on the rail trail, which I have been meaning to do for ages. Enjoy! (You can click on them to see them full size.)

-Molly

 

magazine fun time!

Okay, so you know how there are self-publishing printing-on-demand websites like Lulu, for books? 

Now there’s one for publishing magazines!  All you have to do is upload a PDF, and they’ll print it, ship it, and manage subscribers for you!  for free!

Do you understand what this means?  I am so very excited.  I love video and animation, but I seriously miss publication design so badly.  Just wait.  I will design magazines like there’s no tomorrow and one day you’ll look in your mailbox and say “oh!  why, what is this shiny new thing?”

-Molly

 

the Norwottuck Rail Trail wins!

Sometimes, I silently scold cars that pass me when I’m biking, in a Dave Eggers style imagined conversation.

- You don’t see what I see.

- I am in a hurry.

- The hot air balloons drifting over the cornfields at sunrise…

- I am tired.

- The horses, sheep, cows, winking as you glide by.

- …

- Endless farmland and gracious meadows, rolling green hills. Twisty tall trees, vines hanging down to create a tunnel of green. The birch groves, where, when the early morning sun hits just right, you can very nearly catch sight of where the elves live. On the bridge crossing the Connecticut, squinting a little and tilting your eyebrows just so, the bridge disappears and you are flying into the sunset on your bike, ET style, through the viney green canopies of Never Never Land.

- I am sorry.

- Just think about biking next time.

Also: 20 miles a day X 5 days a week X 10-ish weeks = 1,000 miles! Yeah!

And: Today I got caught in the rain on my way home. It wasn’t so bad at first, the only thing that’s hard about biking in the rain is when my glasses get clouded. But then it started getting really vigorous, and maybe hailing, so I took shelter under a little tunnel because I knew it would pass soon.

After a few minutes, the sun came out, but the rain was still coming down hard core. A rainbow appeared in a perfect arch over the path, lined with trees stretching off into to the horizon, and it was just about the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

This is not my image, but I included it just so you could get a general idea. Sometime I’ll take my camera along and document the beauty myself.

- M