An ambigram is a word, art form or other symbolic representation, whose elements
retain meaning when viewed or interpreted from a different direction,
perspective, or orientation. The meaning of the ambigram may either
change, or remain the same, when viewed or interpreted from different
perspectives. Douglas R. Hofstadter describes an
ambigram as a "calligraphic design that manages to squeeze two different
readings into the selfsame set of curves." Different ambigram artists may
create completely different ambigrams from the same word or words, differing
in both style and form. Discovery and popularity
The earliest known non-natural ambigram dates to 1893 by artist Peter Newell.
Although better known for his children's books and illustrations for Mark Twain
and Lewis Carroll, he published two books of invertible illustrations, in
which the picture turns into a different image entirely when turned upside down.
The last page in his book, Topsys & Turvys contains the phrase THE END,
which, when inverted, reads PUZZLE. In Topsys & Turvys Number 2, Newell ended
with a variation on the ambigram in which THE END changes into PUZZLE 2.
From June to September, 1908, the British monthly The Strand published a
series of ambigrams by different people in its "Curiosities" column. Of
particular interest is the fact that all four of the people submitting ambigrams
believed them to be a rare property of particular words. Mitchell T. Lavin,
whose "chump" was published in June wrote "I think it is in the only word in
the English language which has this peculiarity," while Clarence Williams
wrote, about his "Bet" ambigram, "Possibly B is the only letter of the
alphabet that will produce such an interesting anomaly."
In 1969, Raymond Loewy designed the rotational NEW MAN ambigram logo, which
is still in use today. The mirror ambigram DeLorean Motor Company logo was
first used in 1975. John Langdon and Scott Kim also each
believed that they had invented ambigrams in the 1970s. Langdon and Kim
are probably the two artists who have been most responsible for the
popularization of ambigrams. John Langdon produced the first mirror image
logo "Starship" in 1975. Robert Petrick, who designed the invertible Angel logo
in 1976, was also an early influencer of ambigrams.
The earliest known published reference to the term "ambigram" was by
Hofstadter, who attributed the origin of the word to conversations among a small
group of friends during 1983–1984. The original 1979 edition of Hofstadter's
Gödel, Escher, Bach featured two 3-D ambigrams on the cover.
Ambigrams became more popular as a result of Dan Brown incorporating John
Langdon's designs into the plot of his bestseller, Angels & Demons, and the DVD
release of the Angels & Demons movie contains a bonus chapter called "This is
an Ambigram". Langdon also produced the ambigram that was used for some versions
of the book's cover. Brown used the name Robert Langdon for the hero in his
novels as an homage to John Langdon. In music, the Grateful Dead have used
ambigrams several times, including on their albums Aoxomoxoa and American
Beauty. In the first series of the British show
Trick or Treat, the show's host and creator Derren Brown uses cards with
rotational ambigrams. These cards can read either 'Trick' or 'Treat'.
Although the words spelled by most ambigrams are relatively short in
length, one DVD cover for The Princess Bride movie creates a rotational
ambigram out of two words: "Princess Bride," whether viewed right side up or
upside down. The Transformers movie series have logos
that are a robot face whether viewed right side up or upside down. There are
two such logos, one for an Autobot, and one for a Decepticon.
Types Ambigrams are exercises in graphic
design that play with optical illusions, symmetry and visual perception. Some
ambigrams feature a relationship between their form and their content. Ambigrams
usually fall into one of several categories:
3-Dimensional A design where an object is presented
that will appear to read several letters or words when viewed from different
angles. Such designs can be generated using constructive solid geometry.
Chain A design where a word are interlinked,
forming a repeating chain. Letters are usually overlapped meaning that a word
will start partway through another word. Sometimes chain ambigrams are presented
in the form of a circle. Figure-ground
A design in which the spaces between the letters of one word form another word.
Fractal A version of space-filling ambigrams
where the tiled word branches from itself and then shrinks in a
self-similar manner, forming a fractal. See Scott Kim's fractal of the word
"TREE" for an animated example. Mirror-image
A design that can be read when reflected in a mirror, usually as the same word or
phrase both ways. Ambigrams that form different words when viewed in the
mirror are also known as glass door ambigrams, because they can be printed
on a glass door to be read differently when entering or exiting.
Multi-Lingual An ambigram that can be read one way in
one language and another way in a different language. Multi-lingual
ambigrams can exist in all of the various styles of ambigrams, with
multi-lingual perceptual shift ambigrams being particularly striking.
Natural A natural ambigram is a word that
possesses one or more of the above symmetries when written in its natural
state, requiring no typographic styling. For example, the words "dollop", "suns"
and "pod" form natural rotational ambigrams. In Korean, 곰 and 문 form a
natural rotational ambigram. In some fonts, the word "swims" forms a natural
rotational ambigram. The word "bud" forms a natural mirror ambigram when
reflected over a vertical axis. The words "CHOICE" and "OXIDE", in all
capitals, form natural mirror ambigrams when reflected over a horizontal axis.
The longest such word is CHECKBOOK. The word "TOOTH", in all capitals, forms a
natural mirror ambigram when its letters are stacked vertically and reflected
over a vertical axis. See the article transformation of text for a discussion
of letter symmetry. Perceptual Shift
A design with no symmetry but can be read as two different words depending on
how the curves of the letters are interpreted.
Rotational A design that presents several instances
of words when rotated through a fixed angle. This is usually 180 degrees, but
rotational ambigrams of other angles exist, for example 90 or 45 degrees. The
word spelled out from the alternative direction(s) is often the same, but may
be a different word to the initially presented form. A simple example is the
lower-case abbreviation for "Down", dn, which looks like the lower-case word up
when rotated 180 degrees. Space-Filling
Similar to chain ambigrams, but tile to fill the 2-dimensional plane.
Spinonym An ambigram in which all the letters are
made of the same glyph, possibly rotated and/or inverted. WEB is an example of a
word that can easily be made into a spinonym. Previously called rotoglyphs
or rotaglyphs. Symbiotogram
An ambigram that, when rotated 180 degrees, can be read as a different word
to the original, e.g., swoop and dooms. Creating ambigrams
There are no universal guidelines for creating ambigrams, and there are
different ways of approaching problems. A number of books suggest methods for
creation. Computerized methods to automatically
create ambigrams have been developed. The earliest, the 'Ambimatic' created in
1996, was letter-based and used a database of 351 letter glyphs in which
each letter was mapped to another. This generator could only map a word to
itself or to another word that was the same length: because of this, most of
the generated ambigrams were of poor quality. In 2007, software developer
Mark Hunter developed the ambigram generator at FlipScript.com. It uses a
more complex method of creating ambigrams, with a database containing
more than 5 million curves, and multiple lettering styles.
Other names Ambigrams have also been called, among
other things: vertical palindromes
designatures inversions
See also Anagram
Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter
Mirror writing Palindrome
Strobogrammatic number Gustave Verbeek
References Further reading
Borgmann, Dmitri A., Language on Vacation: An Olio of Orthographical
Oddities, Charles Scribner's Sons Kim, Scott, Inversions: A Catalog of
Calligraphic Cartwheels, Byte Books Hofstadter, Douglas R., "Metafont,
Metamathematics, and Metaphysics: Comments on Donald Knuth's Article 'The
Concept of a Meta-Font'" Scientific American
Langdon, John, Wordplay: Ambigrams and Reflections on the Art of Ambigrams,
Harcourt Brace Hofstadter, Douglas R., Ambigrammi: Un
microcosmo ideale per lo studio della creativita, Hopefulmonster Editore
Firenze Polster, Burkard, Les Ambigrammes l'art
de symétriser les mots, Editions Ecritextes
Polster, Burkard, Eye Twisters: Ambigrams, Escher, and Illusions
Polster, Burkard, Eye Twisters: Ambigrams & Other Visual Puzzles to
Amaze and Entertain, Constable Prokhorov, Nikita, Ambigrams Revealed: A
Graphic Designer's Guide To Creating Typographic Art Using Optical Illusions,
Symmetry, and Visual Perception New Riders
External links Ambigrams at DMOZ
ambigrams & design, by Cleber Faria