Tina & Nick

This is a rare example of a chain inversion that reads differently in its two orientations: one way up it reads Tina, the other Nick. Here I have presented the design as a space-filling series of chains with alternating orientations – this is both visually effective and also solves the problem of what to do with the dot over the i in each name (the brain automatically associates each dot with the letter i below it, and you don‘t get any dots left over as you do in Silas, for instance).

Another pleasing feature of this design, is that none of the letters in Tina directly corresponds with any of the letters in Nick; so for instance, the t in Tina is equivalent to half the n in Nick. Likewise, the i in Tina makes part of the k in Nick, the n in Tina is formed from both the c and the k in Nick, and the a in Tina is formed from both the n and i in Nick.

By coincidence, when I assembled this space-filling version of the design, I found that all the dots naturally fell almost on a perfect square grid oriented at 45° – only very small adjustments to the layout were neeed to fit the dots exactly to such a grid, as they appear here.