Couples Ring Design Challenge

The ambigram to the right has been submitted to the current Ambigram Magazine design contest Couples Ambigram Ring Challenge.  This is a 180° rotational figure-ground ambigram with the names of my wife and me.  In the orientation shown here, the black figures spell 'SUSAN'.  When rotated 180° the white spaces between the black figures spell 'ERIK'.

This design was a bit tricky since the contest rules required the design to display a different name in each orientation (termed "symbiotogram') and 'Susan' and 'Erik' have a different number of characters.  While there are plenty of symbiotograms made from words with different lengths, the classic "Life / Death" design comes to mind, I prefer designs that don't rely heavily on modified Old-English or Old-German fonts.  I find that many designs that rely heavily on these fonts are difficult to read.

For this design the serifs on the 'E' and 'I' were mostly unavoidable; the serifs on the 'E' could be minimized or eliminated by extending the first upright of the 'N' to line up with the vertical extents of all the other figures.  Because we tend to focus mostly on the top half of letters, the extra black blobs between the first 'S' and 'U' and between the second 'S' and 'A' in 'Susan' and the extra white blobs between 'E' and 'R' and between 'I' and 'K' in 'Erik' seemingly disappear.