Ekuil-i-Brium

My brother Sujaan has a friend who plays in a rock band. Said band, for reasons best known to them, call themselves Ekuil-i-Brium. Maybe, like another band before them, they would like to say they are Equilibrium with a K. Anyway, it seems they want a logo, so Sujaan asked me if I could create an ambigram for them.

Before Dan Brown made John Langdon famous, I had been introduced to Langdon’s ambigrams through the work of the American mathematics writer Martin Gardner. I promptly entered upon a phase where, instead of doodling in class like I usually do, I would create ambigrams with names of friends. Then the phase passed, as phases are wont to do, I lost my notebook of ambigrams, and forgot all about them.

The request to design the logo gave me the opportunity to revisit this rather engaging pastime. Maybe my long sabbatical has made me rusty, but the end product turned out to be rather disappointing.

In terms of legibility and aesthetic appeal, Ekuil-i-Brium is by no means one of my best efforts. Moreover, it is too complicated to make a good logo. So Sujaan came up with his own design, which I have to admit is better than mine. (That rhymed!) His black-and-red themed logo is a stylized EiB in the shape of a guitar. Below the logo is the band’s name in *twitch* Papyrus.

But this logo was not to the satisfaction of the band members. They apparently said that an acoustic guitar does not suit their image, so they want it reworked to represent an electric guitar, which has more machismo. Strange are the ways of the hard rock bands.

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The solution to last week’s problem is B-A-C-F-I-H-G-E-D-B. However, I will be taking B-A-D-C-F-I-G-H-G-E-B. Though this is not the shortest route, the Indian Railways are still giving me the discount either because they did not catch on, or because they are too nice. I had to take a suboptimal route because I need to visit A (Lucknow) and D (Hyderabad) in succession. If I have not already told you the reason, you are welcome to try and guess why.