The inspiration for an ambigram can come from almost anywhere. It could be a commissioned piece, a gift for a friend, or a ‘just because’ in-the-spur-of-the-moment desire to create something unique and unusual. But, even if the inspiration is instantaneous, you still have to go through the analysis & determine whether your chosen word will make a successful ambigram or not.

In this example, the song ‘Out Of My Mind’ by John Mayer was on the radio. I have always been a fan of blues, and I like Mayer’s music because he can switch seamlessly between the mainstream artist and a classic blues man, whose guitar-playing abilities rival those of Hendrix and SRV. While listening to the song, I wrote down the name of the song and artist, almost mechanically, in my sketchbook.

(click the image to see a larger preview)

Of course, my next thought was ‘Oh!Ambigram!’ since I already had my sketchbook open and had pencil ready in hand. First, I wrote down the words ‘john mayer’ in lowercase, lowercase cursive, and uppercase.

(click the image to see a larger preview)

Usually, I start off with writing the future ambigram in uppercase, but in this case, I decided to write it down in several different cases. At first, I decided to work with all uppercase letters. Uppercase letters are much easier to draw, read, and work with; they have much fewer tails, serifs, ears, and other typographic structural elements that are ubiquitous amongst lowercase letters.

After writing down the words ‘john mayer’ in all uppercase, I wrote it upside down to see how the letters lined up, and then began a more in-depth analysis.

(click the image to see a larger preview)

After looking at it for a few minutes, I realized that my initial assumption that uppercase would be easier to work with was erroneous. When I realized that I also came to a few other conclusions:

- After I decided to use very simplified lowercase letters, I realized that a 1-to-1 ratio would work perfectly for this ambigram.

- I was lucky enough to have a ‘central’ letter, the M, which has an equal number of characters on each side; in addition, the M was very easy to modify to read the same way upside down.

- The words ‘john mayer’ was as close to a natural ambigram as I could come; I had to make but a few slight changes to make it both readable & legible.

In the previous image, you saw a few quick sketches of each letter pair to see how they would look underneath each other. Here is a more finalized sketch:

(click the image to see a larger preview)

After I finished the first complete sketch, I also realized that this would be a perfect opportunity to use an actual typeface to finish the ambigram. Usually, I steer away from using already designed typefaces and always hand-draw the final diagram, then trace it in the computer. However, for this ambigram, I wanted to portray the effortless sound and classy style of John Mayer’s music. I didn’t want a heavy or even a regular typeface weight for this ambigram. So in the end, I decided to go with the tried and true, overused & abused, perfect and boring: I chose Helvetica Light as my typeface weight. After some very minor adjustments, this was the final solution.

(click the image to see a larger preview)

End of process!