Dan Brown's Robert Langdon inspired by DU professor
Joshua Kurtz
Issue date: 5/22/09 Section: News
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Langdon, a professor of typography at Drexel's Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design, also designed ambigrams for Angels & Demons.
An ambigram is a word that is read the same way from different angles. Langdon's ambigrams for Angels & Demons include the words Illuminati, earth, air, fire, water and a diamond incorporating all those words except Illuminati. Each of these graphics spells the same word or series of words whether looked at normally or upside down.
Langdon, who has been creating ambigrams since the early 1970s, became a freelance artist in 1977, and taught at the Moore College of Art from 1985-1988. He has taught at Drexel since 1988.
"I was an English major, but I had always known I was an artist," Langdon said, who worked at a typography shop after college.
Langdon also said the Taoist symbol of the yin yang is a major influence on his work. The symbol, which illustrates the balance of opposites, greatly appealed to Langdon. When Langdon later began to read about Taoism, he found that "virtually anything about Taoism would confirm with the philosophy I developed."
Included is the belief that everything should be looked at from more than one point of view. This belief is a central part of Langdon's ambigrams.
"I never saw ambigrams as a commercially viable form of art," Langdon said. "Rather, the ambigrams are "an artistic expression of my philosophy."
Langdon was also influenced by the work of M.C. Escher and psychedelic poster lettering, among other sources.
The early part of Langdon's career as an artist featured a series of smaller steps toward greater recognition. One such step occurred when Langdon made an ambigram of the words Jefferson Starship that the rock band eventually included on the label of its album "Spitfire" and as a backdrop during a tour. These accomplishments, however, did not lead to any major breakthroughs for Langdon.
In 1992, Langdon released "Wordplay," a book featuring ambigrams as well as essays about the ambigrams and the Taoist ideas behind them. Brown's father, Dick Brown, a mathematician, saw Langdon's book and appreciated the symmetry of the pieces featured in "Wordplay" and the two began a correspondence.
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