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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).

Tina & Nick

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.