Jimmy Stewart (1997)

SYMMETRY. Rotation by 180 degrees. Turn this design upside down and it reads the same.

INSPIRATION. Revised version of a design created for Jimmy Stewart in February 1990 at Princeton University, New Jersey.

STORY. In February 1990 I had the pleasure of meeting Jimmy Stewart at Princeton University. He had been invited back to his alma mater to receive an award from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, and I was a visiting scholar in the art department.

We met briefly as he toured the school, and I got to see what a gentleman he is in person. Since I was at Princeton teaching classes on inversions, I took the opportunity to do an inversion for Jimmy Stewart, which he enjoyed in his charming way.

Meeting him made quite an impression. Two years later I created a puzzle for NewMedia magazine based on the movie It's a Wonderful Life, which features Mr. Stewart in his most well-known role. In making the puzzle I got to study his performance in detail. The puzzle appears in my book The NewMedia Magazine Puzzle Workout.

Upon hearing of his recent passing, I decided to post the inversion on his name to this site. I was not satisfied with the legibility of the original, so I did the new version shown above. I added a glow and black frame to suggest black and white movies.

For more information on Jimmy Stewart, visit the home page of the Jimmy Stewart Museum.