Ambigrams

I first became aware of ambigrams when I read Angels and Demons by Dan Brown. It contains illustrations by John Langdon which I was blown away by. I remember at the time I had difficulty conceiving how someone could come up with such ingenious designs. I think my fascination with ambigrams is an extension of my love of puns, wordplay, design and solving puzzles.

I retained an interest in ambigrams for many years but had only attempted a few myself. It wasn’t until lockdown that I decided I would teach myself and learn the techniques properly. Looking back, my interest in typography, tessellation and previous hobbies of calligraphy and Celtic knotwork were a good groundwork into trying to understand and improve my skills. Since then, I have gone on to produce hundreds of designs (there is something quite addictive about ‘solving’ an ambigram) and now regularly enter contests among the online ambigram community.

An ambigram is a piece of typographical design that can be interpreted differently from multiple different viewpoints. It can be rotated, reflected, offset and distorted but the aim is that it can still be readable from a differing perspective. It can be the same word or different and even whole sentences. The main types of ambigrams are rotational (180°, 90°, 45°), mirror (reflected vertically), lake (reflected horizontally), chain (word(s) are repeated and overlapping), spinonyms (using the same glyph repeatedly), figure-ground (using the negative space) and perceptual shift (the brain can adjust its interpretation of the glyphs to read multiple words). Below are a few of ambigrams I have created.