One of Tara and I’s obsessions while traveling was creating ambigrams. They first came onto our radar when we were discussing the design possibilities for our next circus venture, Downside-Up. With a name like that, there are so many graphic possibilities, but I realized an ambigram would be the most apropos.
What is an ambigram? According to Wired, ambigrams are the hottest trend in typography since Helvetica. An ambigram is a word-image that can be read from multiple vantage points, most commonly by flipping it 180 degrees. Ambigrams were popularized a few years ago by Dan Brown’s book Angels and Demons, which features several ambigrams as plot points, including this one to the left.
Now, the complex gothic ambigrams from Angels and Demons were the only ones I was very familiar with, and I believed them to be for advanced artists, mathematicians, designers – not for amateur typographers and doodlers like us.
ambigram in progress
NOT SO! Ambigrams are fun AND easy to make! Tara and I made loads of them on our many long train rides around Europe. It’s pretty simple – I just start with writing the word below itself upside down. Then look at each of the letter pairs, think about the key components in each letter necessary to define it, and start doodling different ways those letters can be combined. Think about how to turn necessary letter strokes into decorative elements. It also helps to consider both upper and lower case letters, I thought ‘SEATTLE’ would be impossible, until I thought to try it with lower case letters.
I’m in the process of digitizing the Downside-Up ambigram for a logo now, but meanwhile here’s another one I’m working on. Try making them sometime! And don’t go looking for any lame ambigram generators on the internet – get out a pencil and pad and do it yourself. It’s like solving a logic puzzle.
For more on ambigrams, check out:
http://www.johnlangdon.net/ – the website of the Prof who’s one of the leading ambigram scholars, he also made all the ambigrams for Dan Brown.
http://www.ambigram.com/ – online magazine about everything ambigram.
