I’m fond of ambigrams, and have taken a stab at making more than a few in my day. This is the latest:
I’m just putting it out there at the moment without explanation, though. I’d like to see if it’s readable and interesting.
What do you think?
It seems that the trick is making the thing read correctly both ways, while keeping the letterforms appealing and at least reasonably consistent. It’s hard to make an ambigram “font”, though this sort of font shows up often:
My designs lean more to the “tribal” aesthetic than the Olde Tyme Fontography. It gives me a bit more flexibility, though it’s not always as readable. It’s interesting to me to see how these might work. They often try to “hack” our natural tendency to see patterns, especially with the little bits and floating details that might be important one way but best ignored the other way.
Sometimes it’s easier with more words, too… and sometimes not. They can give more datapoints to help decipher the rest of the puzzle. This one is for the Alhambra Speech and Debate team, for example, and some of it works well… other bits don’t. A lot depends on context; someone on the team would be able to read it fairly easily since they would expect it to be relevant to their interests.
If you’ve a guess at what this latest one reads, I’d love to see it in the comments. Thanks!
Updated with this application of the ambigram… and the word: “Chiaroscuro”. Thanks, all!
