John Langdon (born April 19, 1946) is an American graphic designer, ambigram artist, painter, and writer.
[13][4] Other inspirations throughout the formative years of Langdon's ambigrams included the yin and yang symbol, M. C. Escher, psychedelic art and lettering, Rick Griffin, Herb Lubalin, cubism, René Magritte, Edgar Allan Poe, Ogden Nash, John Barth, and Tom Robbins.
[1] Langdon successfully avoided the Vietnam War draft through legal student deferment, one of his goals in seeking higher education.
In a 2006 interview with the Orange County Register, he shared that "the lesson of Taoism is that if you have only one vantage point, you're not seeing the truth ... the more ambiguity you invite into your life, the more things make sense and become understandable.
"[12][10] Langdon uses mathematics, particularly Fibonacci sequences, bell curves, and normal distribution to "explore relationships of everyday objects and situations that often go unnoticed".
[16][10][1][4][13] Math professor Dick Brown contacted him with questions about his craft and also asked if he would be interested in designing a cover for his son Dan's new album, Angels and Demons.
[21][22] In 2007, Langdon and fellow graphic artist Hal Taylor won an award from the Type Directors Club for their font Flexion.
[23] Two years later, along with Jason Santa Maria, Khoi Vinh, Liz Danzico, and Dan Cederholm, Langdon created Typedia, a wiki-style font library.
[4][28] Langdon has provided design criticism for magazines such as Critique; forewords for books such as The Art of Deception by Brad Honeycutt and Eye Twisters by Burkard Polster; and prefaces for publications such as Calligraffiti by Niels Shoe Meulman.