Oh yeah!
Very cool being a "K+N".
How about double uppercase "L" which is very common.
Maybe something like a cap "F" fliped vertically?

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Yes, I'm old, but I'm back in style!

> Very cool being a “K+N”.

Or just a "K". Or just an "N".
I forgot to point out that the ambiguity in metaligatures is perhaps its strongest attraction (for me at least).

> Maybe something like a cap “F” fliped vertically?

I've thought of making a t-shirt that says "GOOD LUCK", but with a (really short) crossbar coming out of the middle of the "L"...

hhp

You might consider calling them bilexual...

------------------------

I'm old, too, but I was never in style the first time around...

"bilexual"
and the act of reading two words in one is "bilexic."

Hrant,
I get you're fascination with this.

In Peru I saw a shop sign with the word "DE", in which the central crossbar of the E was inside the D. Or something like that. I remember loving the fact you can't tell whether something like that is legible or not. I think I have a picture, but I'll only be able to search for it tomorrow night.

Here's a quick one:

HEAT or HEART?

Odd. I've been floundering with an identity update. One of the ideas

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y234/jupiterboy/HED.gif

might meet your criteria. Not sure if it is working for me however.

?

I forgot to point out that the ambiguity in metaligatures is perhaps its strongest attraction (for me at least).

So, Hrant,
what other ambiguous forms have you thought of?
There must be so many possibilities, even from language to language.

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Yes, I'm old, but I'm back in style!

the most interesting part to me about the KN lig is that it's one sound embodied by one glyph. i wonder if you could do the same for the GHT and then have a three letter/ligature (now i want to ligate whole words -- ha!) spelling of the word knight.
one combo that i kept seeing in slides at typecon is the lc "ra" combo. i wonder how accepting readers would be of a ligature that closed up all that space by ligating the exit stroke of the arm of the r with the entry stroke of the a... whatcha think?

Oldnick: funny. But what if it's more than two? Lexorgism?

> There must be so many possibilities, even from language to language.

Especially cool would be metaligatures that leverage linguistic dichotomy; a word that's not spelled the same but that can be read in more than one language. Sounds like it's time to form the Quebec Institute Pour Metaligatures...

Another, a comment on the design it's set in:
http://www.themicrofoundry.com/other/steile.gif

hhp

From what I hear Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich (Bembo's Zoo) is currently working on an Open Type display face where the entire word becomes one big ligature. There's like a gazillion glyphs and ligatures.

Other possibilities for names...

schizo-affective characters
döppelbangers
ambitextrous

Here's a logo I designed in 1977.
http://www.oktransportation.com

The idea, which is a mainstay of the "compressed" ligature, is that where there is a repeated vertical stem, one is removed in a kind of "negative kerning" exercise, and the remaining stem does double duty. In a logo, this provides a point of visual interest.

There is a similar idea in the "fi" ligature, where the ball of the f serves as the dot on the "i", but the purpose is different: it could be considered as the removal of visual stutter.

Another category of compressions: as in the Avant Garde ligatures, where the purpose is to enable justification of tight-set headlines.

An ambiligature of ph could be made to resemble an f.
Tim

Huh, "The operation timed out while attempting to contact www.oktransportation.com." is certainly an interesting slogan.

> An ambiligature of ph could be made to resemble an f.

You know of course what Miss Tiff should do: make a metaligature that
looks both like an "T" and a "M", and use two long esses at the end.

hhp

I mentioned this earlier in this thread, but only got around to uploading the photo now, so I thought I'd share:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gabrielhl/39022086

Cuzco, Peru.

That's quite good.
Especially since I read it all successfully, then saw the trick!

hhp

To me the best thing about it, aside from its "readability", is the way it solved the space problem. With a complete "DE", the lower line would be longer than the top one.

And you just got to love that weird C, too.

Here's a bilexic classic; Man Rays Dancer/Danger

ƒ

hey hrant,
do handwritten metaligs count? :)
(in this example, the "rk" in "work" and the "rl" in "early")

I think those certainly count. Any triples?

hhp

in this example, the “rk” in “work” and the “rl” in “early”

Sorry, Amy, but in answer to Hrant's original pondering of 'how the recognition of the components is weighted (intentionally or not)', I read your handwriting example as 'to wonk eany'. :)

Fredo: That avatar is FREAKING ME OUT. :(

I have just started releasing that I use these meta ligatures in my hand writing... its quite crazy, I have some really strange character combinations tht I (unknowingly) come up with.

Fredo: That avatar is FREAKING ME OUT. :(
Should I change it?

ƒ

Stick with the Watchmen.
Tim

Any triples?
i'm looking into my bottomless pit of handwriting samples to come up with some good ones...this happens a lot with common word ending combinations (in English) such as "ing" or "tion", etc.

I read your handwriting example as ‘to wonk eany’
hmmm...perhaps seeing the whole line helps? i guess out of context of the rest of the line, it's pretty strange looking...

I have just started releasing that I use these meta ligatures in my hand writing
you're not the only one...this is pretty common, especially when scribbling quickly (quickly scribbling?)... sort of like self-inflicted shorthand...

not sure what to call this :D

http://www.agency26.com/hrant.jpg

Accurate? :-/

hhp

Fredo, I still getting freaked out. ;) Hahah. I like it though.

> I read your handwriting example as ‘to wonk eany’.

But note that ambiguity is part of the essence of metaligatures. Although it can be argued that the ambiguity might need to be restricted to the "intended" componental letters for the idea to be most useful.

hhp

Looks like a new logo, or maybe I never noticed, hmmm.

http://domineydesign.com/

I spotted this 3d ‘ligatured’ logo http://multilinkmagazine.com/

Tim

Norbert Florendo linked me to this thread. please take a look on my postings:
http://typophile.com/node/20845

Anyway, stop searching for a name. it already exists:
it is called AMBIGRAM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambigram

I think you are confusing the purpose of ambigrams and metaligatures Seb, an ambigram maybe read from different directions, metaligatures are about joining two (or more) characters to form a single glyph*
*I might have oversimplified here.
Tim

Did i confuse it?
well, anyway, some more
http://www.helenarubinstein.com/index.aspx

a classic
http://www.sebastianmolzahn.com/AvantGarde.jpg

> the most interesting part to me about the KN lig is that it’s one sound embodied by one glyph.

I completely agree with Paul. Here's another example:

This one might not be as successful, since it can be read as KANT as well.

Hey, nice! That "HR" reminds me of some PsyOps stuff. But yeah,
it would be read as "Kant" be everybody... except Typophilers... who
are not also philosophy buffs. :-)

Try making the top half fully from an "H" (with a fully-formed bottom-right
corner), and the leg either replacing the bottom-right stem segment from a
full "H", or starting from further in (which would help the spacing too).

hhp

Can I be such a bore as to ask the exact difference between a metaligature and a ligature? Like, between KN and Et?

A metaligature has en element of ambiguity.
Its usefulness comes from being more than one thing, although nothing totally.

hhp

Thank isn't the second, which might be read as either 'KANT' or 'HRANT' a better example?

Offshoot:

Are there any existing samples of text art where a new word is formed in reverse? Wasn't there an example on T'phile of a shirt that said love or hate, but the opposite in the mirror? Would that be the ultimate metalig?

Oh yeah, original request was for examples. Here's a facsimile of an old friend's signature: