What is the first word that you see in this figure/ground painting from John Langdon? Do you see the question or the answer? Can you find both? To see a similar painting from John Langdon, revisit his painting titled Love. (via John Langdon)
In the early 1980s, ambigram master and puzzle designer Scott Kim created the following image while performing some font experiments. He made a font in which black and white spaces were equally wide, and then had fun exploring what he could do with it. More examples of Scott Kim’s ambigrams (which he calls inversions) can […]
Scott Kim created the original ambigram (he also calls them inversions) that is featured in this animation for a family holiday card in 1985. To create the angular letters, he cut the letter shapes out of construction paper and then traced them into his computer. The text reads the same whether it is viewed normally […]
While browsing through Nikita Prokhorov’s recent book Ambigrams Revealed for the third time, one of the featured ambigram designs really stood out to me. This design by Mark Palmer from Red Chapter Clothing reads exactly the same when rotated 180 degrees. Palmer notes that, “From start to finish, this Shark Attack ambigram is one of […]
Ambigrams Revealed is a new book from graphic and ambigram designer Nikita Prokhorov. The book features a series of ambigram case studies that are judged by a panel that includes the author, John Langdon, Scott Kim, and five others. It also features a 40 page “Ambigram Showcase” toward the back of the book that contains […]
This ambigram, created by John Langdon, features two words with opposite meanings that can be seen individually by rotating the image 180 degrees. Shown at this angle, the word TRUE can be seen and a very fancy font.
Some of the best ambigrams deal with words that have some sort of polarity to them. Two perfect examples of this would be the words good/evil and love/hate. These designs are inherently more meaningful than those that would present two words completely unrelated to one another. The example below, created by Michigan State University professor […]
