1. Miracle Whip? While the M/W is an obvious ambigram, I never thought I would see this on a container of mayonnaise from Kraft! My girlfriend picked this out of a crowded store shelf in a blink of an eye, and I cannot believe I didn’t see it first!

2. The Sun microsystems logo has been around for 28 years before it was acquired by Oracle in 2010. While the company itself doesn’t technically exist anymore, the ambigram logo survives!

3. Say what you while about Hyundai quality, but at least part of their logo is an ambigram!

4. Xpedx is a simple yet effective ambigram, and in my mind embodies what a corporate ambigram should be: readable, legible, and aesthetically suited for the business.

If any of our readers see ambigrams in the real world, take a photo and send me an email, telling me where you saw the ambigram & what you think of it. We might just feature it in the next “Real World Ambigrams.”

This has the potential to be the most international challenge yet! Keeping this in mind, the staff at Ambigram.com would like to ask all the artists to stick to several ‘rules’…

1. Please create your ambigram in English We love seeing ambigrams in different languages, however, without knowing the language, it will be difficult to judge the the work. BUT…if you would like to create an ambigram of your chosen city in the native language, send it to us, and we will try to feature it when we announce the winner of this challenge.
2. Please stick to relatively major cities Here at Ambigram.com, we pride ourselves on our knowledge of world geography. However, we might not know the name of some small town or village in your country…which, once again, would make judging somewhat difficult.

Other then the above, there are no other rules. Remember to have fun with this challenge, and we offer the following hint: While you’re asked to design the ambigram in English, think about using color/symbols that allude to your culture.

Deadline

All artwork will need to be submitted by midnight on June 5th, 2010 to qualify. Email your designs to challenge@ambigram.com . The contest is open to everyone, whether or not you have participated in the past, so give it a shot.

The results will be published on June 19th, 2010, and the next challenge will be announced at that time.

Please be sure to include a web site URL that we can link to if your design makes it into the top 5 list.

So…good luck and have fun! Let’s make this the best Ambigram Challenge yet!

Blazing poster. Used with permission of the artist.

Ambigram.com: Sebastian, thank you for speaking with us. First, let’s get the expected question out of the way. How long have you known about ambigrams, and when did you first become interested in them?

Sebastian Lester: I first became aware of ambigrams in the early 90′s when I was in the first year of my graphic design degree. For as long as I can remember I’ve been interested in optical illusions and clever visual ideas with letterforms though. In 1992 I designed a logo for a proposed art college magazine called ‘Edge’. It wasn’t an ambigram but all the letters were the same shape rotated and flipped to create the word. In 1992 I also designed a somewhat lunatic font called ‘recycle’ made out of five characters that you rotated, scaled and flipped to create an entire lower case alphabet. That was the theory anyway. Making ambigrams was a natural progression from these kind of experiments.

Edge magazine logo. Used with permission of the artist.

Recycle typeface. Used with permission of the artist.

Ambigram.com: Is ‘Blazing’ your first ambigram design? If it’s not your first, what was your first ambigram?

SL: The first decent ambigram I drew was ‘Virtual Reality’ in 1993 whilst at art college. I liked the fact that the ambigram approach worked well conceptually with the idea of virtual reality and that the letterforms have a suitably futuristic style to them.

Virtual Reality ambigram. Used with permission of the artist.

Ambigram.com: When designing your ‘Blazing’ limited edition art print, what was the biggest obstacle you had to overcome? Was it creating ambigrams out of all the words, maintaining a consistent style, or another difficulty you’d like to mention?

Blazing poster sketches. Used with permission of the artist.

SL: The aim was always to create something that was as attractive as any other limited edition print I’d created before, but also happened to be a successful ambigram. So working with those constraints was difficult and I tried various approaches before settling on this treatment. I’ve written a short article here about the print for anyone who is interested.

Blazing poster close-ups. Used with permission of the artist.

Ambigram.com: Do you think your background as a type designer and illustrator helped when designing the ‘Blazing’ poster?

SL: Definitely. I’m well versed in creating consistency in shapes and working experimentally in a variety of lettering styles. A lot of the qualities you need as a type designer are useful for creating ambigrams. In both disciplines you have to be creative, think laterally, have a forensic approach to detail, and stay focused and persistent for the best results.

Ambigram.com: What do you love the most about typography and letterforms?

SL: I don’t really know. Letterforms just seem to make more sense to me than anything else I know. I find them endlessly stimulating and fascinating. The Latin alphabet is one of our most beautiful and profound creations. I feel incredibly lucky I’ve found something I love as much as I do that I can actually make a living from. And what’s not to love about ambigrams? The best ambigrams aren’t just clever. They have a magical, almost transcendent, quality about them.

Ambigram.com: If someone wants to incorporate custom hand-lettered typography into their work, what is a good starting point?

SL: Just work loosely and freely with your lines to start with. Read about type and lettering history. Be inspired by other artists and designers, but find your own voice. Just have fun. If you persist, and you’re having fun in the process, it will become apparent in your work.

Ambigram.com: What is your personal creative process, and where do you draw your inspiration from?

SL: I always try and research a subject or particular lettering style as much as possible before I start a project. I always start with a pencil and paper, rather than a computer, as it’s the easiest way to get a lot of ideas down fast. I brainstorm words and ideas and shapes, not just letterforms. It’s important to be totally unselfconscious about making marks on paper. I start with loose scribbles. I might take elements I like from six different scribbles and make a more resolved drawing. Then I’ll scan it in and start refining it on a computer.

I draw my inspiration from everywhere. I find beauty, in all its manifestations, inspiring. I have an appreciation of the history of type, calligraphy and lettering that continues to grow. I collect old ephemera. Sometimes totally random things can fuel an idea. Sunshine, trees, medieval armour, a piece of product design or music. I’m always thinking about and absorbing the letterforms I see around me.

Ambigram.com: Who is your favorite ambigram designer?

SL: There are some incredible ambigram artists out there. I guess, to my mind, the best ambigrams combine ingenious legibility problem solving with great aesthetic beauty and I think John Langdon consistently achieves the best balance of those two components.

Ambigram.com: What is your favorite typeface? Why?

SL: Typefaces are tools so it depends what the typeface is to be used for. I have a favorite typeface for on screen legibility. I have a favorite typeface for setting books about the Renaissance in. I have a favorite typeface for setting magazines about monster trucks in. So unfortunately I’ve given the question far too much thought over the last fifteen years to have a simple answer.

Ambigram.com: What is your favorite ambigram?

SL: Sorry to choose one of my own pieces but I have to say ‘Blazing’. I just put so much into it and I’m so happy with it. It’s been quite an undertaking for me. It really pushed me creatively, it looks great in the flesh having been screen printed by hand to the highest standards, and it’s being sold by a gallery that sells the work of some very well known and successful artists. I feel very lucky to have been able to make it work.

Ambigram.com: Sebastian, the Blazing poster is beautiful, so you have the full right to toot your horn! Thank you for the insight into your daily work, life and inspiration.

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More of Sebastian Lester’s work can be found here: http://www.seblester.co.uk/

Ambigram.com: Tiffany, thank you for speaking with us. I will ask you the same question that I ask everyone, yet the answer never gets old, because each time the answer is slightly different:

How did you become interested in ambigrams?

Tiffany: Like most people, I was first introduced to ambigrams through John Langdon‘s work, but it was not from “Angels & Demons”. An online friend of mine was asked to be be in a book about words that are used as tattoos and posted a picture of the featured tattoo, Langdon’s mirror-image design of the word “Balance” (which she had permission to use). I immediately rushed over to Langdon’s site and was fascinated by the rotational designs. I’ve always been interested in calligraphy, word puzzles, optical illusions, and secret codes, so I had to try it out myself.

Ambigram.com: What was the very first ambigram you created? We’d love to see an example of it.

Tiffany: The first thing I tried was my last name, “Harvey”. Luckily, it was a very easy word to use! I drew it out on paper and then tried to draw it on the computer with my mouse, which is never pretty, but this was the basic design.

Once I started, I couldn’t stop!

Ambigram.com: You have a strong background in arts & crafts. How has that influenced your ambigram design?

Tiffany: I’ve always noticed a lot of cross over between different arts. When you are working on ceramics, you might use painting or carving techniques. I’ve used origami in resin pendants, stitched together paper on my sewing machine to create greeting cards, it all overlaps. In some ways, even the patchwork and the the embellishments I add to the ambigrams are similar. I was always trying to arrange the different fabrics in a way that looked random, but balanced, the same way I might layout stars and curls and dots around the letters of an ambigram. Developing an eye for details will carry through to any kind of artistic work.

Ambigram.com: Now, I have to ask this question. Aesthetically speaking, your ambigrams are spot on almost every single time. How do you create those perfectly matching curves, flourishes, and the rest of the intricate details that are such an integral part of your ambigram style?

Tiffany: I think repeating the same motif throughout the design can really help. If you look at fonts, you will see the same lines and curves appearing again and again throughout the letters. That is what creates the unifying style of the font. You can add a curl, or stick thin lines in among thick ones, but try to add them to the design more than once so that they become part of the overall style.

Ambigram.com: To follow up the previous question, how much of a factor does computer software play in your design? Do you create the complete ambigram using just paper/pencil  & then finalize it on the computer, or do you create very rough sketches and then develop the ambigram on the computer?

Tiffany: In the beginning, I did draw out the ambigrams on paper and scan them in to trace on the computer. I didn’t have a very good program to do this with, I was basically drawing with my mouse again, but I worked with large images so I could smooth things out easier.

Soon after that I was introduced to Inkscape, which is basically a free version of Illustrator, so that I could create vector images. Last year I got a Wacom graphics tablet, and have since then retired the scanner. I do still create a very rough sketch when a customer first contacts me, just to make sure ambigram is possible. I either create a more finished sketch on the computer, which is then re-worked in Inkscape, or use my rough sketch as a guide and lay out the ambigram from the font pieces of previous designs.

Here you can see it a little more step-by-step.

Ambigram.com: Are there any types of ambigrams you haven’t tried before that you’d like to design in the future? Have you ever designed any ambigrams in a different language?

Tiffany: I’m actually learning Japanese right now, and I’d love to create some bilingual ambigrams in Japanese and English.  These Chinese-English ambigrams are an inspiration.   I have created a few foreign ambigrams, though most of them use the Latin alphabet, so they are not very different from normal ambigrams in English, or some of the unusual names I get!

The most difficult foreign design I’ve done was a Russian ambigram in the Cyrillic alphabet, because I have no real concept of what makes the letters readable, or the different styles they can take on. I based my sketches on a cursive version of the alphabet I found online and sent the customer a few variations so she could pick what was most readable.

Ambigram.com: Are there any artists in the ambigram community that inspire you? Is there anyone whose work you follow really closely?

Tiffany: Of course, John Langdon was a big inspiration, and I remember looking at a lot of other work when I was first starting out. Now I think I tend to avoid others’ ambigrams, because I worry about being unintentionally inspired by other designs.

Ambigram.com: What is your own personal process for developing an ambigram, from start to finish? Where do you find your inspiration?

Tiffany: You can see a a lot of my step-by-step process in the above question about software. As far as inspiration, I think most of it comes from my customers. Sometimes the ambigrams are simply a matter of putting two names together with a font I’ve used many times before.

Other times the customers comes to me with layouts and embellishments I’ve never created before, a list of 10 fonts that I would not normally consider for an ambigram, or even ask for non-ambigram word art. The further I am drug out of my comfort zone, the more I start to worry, but the designs you struggle with are usually the ones you are most proud of in the end.

Ambigram.com: What advice would you give someone who is just starting to design their first ambigram?

Tiffany: Get a calligraphy book and practice writing a few of the alphabets. You don’t need to get really good at it (I certainly never was!), but seeing how the strokes repeat, and how the same letter can be completely different from one alphabet to the next, can really help you put together a readable design. Practice is also a big part of it.  The more ambigrams you draw, the more successful letter combinations you will discover and file away in your mind for future use.

Ask a friend if they can read your design, and what letters need more work. You already know what the word is supposed to be, so you need outside opinions. Also, small tweaks can really affect the readability of an ambigram, so don’t be afraid to play around with a hard-to-read letter.

Ambigram.com: One last question and then we’ll let you get back to work. If you had to pick one major corporation out there and redesign their logo as an ambigram, who would it be?

Tiffany: There have been several times when I have seen a logo and thought, “that would be pretty easy to turn into an ambigram”, and even considered making one up for fun and sending it to the company. Of course, now that you ask, I can’t remember any of them!

I think the most fun designs to create would be for a company that could really use the rotational aspect of the ambigram in their product, like on a watch or Ferris wheel, or across a tablecloth at a restaurant where customers could read the design from both sides.

Ambigram.com: Tiffany, thank you for the interview. We look forward to seeing more work from you!

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You can find more examples of Tiffany’s work at her web site at: http://wordillusion.com/

John Langdon
http://www.johnlangdon.net/

I have favorite ambigrams now and then.  They last for a while, and then they’re not my favorite any longer.  If I have a current favorite, it would be one of Scott Kim’s recent ambigrams of the phrase “REVERSE ENGINEERING”.

It reads as easily as any ambigram, it has a consistent style and sort of a heavy construction look, and there’s obviously a nice resonance between the phrase and the ambigrammatic treatment.  In fact that relationship seems to kind of wink  at the viewer, and thus helps, along with the choppy style and the particularly un-engineer-y color treatment, to create a sense of fun. All that adds up to a highly charming piece of ambigram art. In addition, it’s always nice to see reversible glyphs that we haven’t seen before, and this ambigram appears to have at least a couple of those.

As long as I have another paragraph available, maybe I can get away with mentioning a few more without showing them. I’ll first mention Scott’s  GATHERING FOR GARDNER 5 animated logo. (http://www.scottkim.com/inversions/gallery/g4g5.html) While it has  only a couple of double-function glyphs, is just so much fun to watch, it’s been a favorite for a long time. Another old favorite is Bob Petrick’s NONSENSE. More recent: Brett Gilbert’s CHRISTMAS (displayed below) and Daan Juttman’s HALF BLOOD PRINCE.

Of my own work, the Philosophy ambigram would be a favorite.

With it’s text accompaniment, it represents the heart and soul of all my ambigram work, but it’s a bit too old to still carry around as a favorite.

Robert Petrick
http://www.robertpetrick.com/wordart.html

Robert Petrick sent in a whole collection of his ambigrams! When asked which ones were his favorites, he said “I think out of those EUROPE, then secondly JESTER.”

Douglas Hofstadter
http://www.introspections.org/2008/07/22/the-ambigrams-of-douglas-hofstadter/ (This website isn’t Douglas’s, but a great collection of his other ambigrams.)

Douglas Hofstadter sent in an ambigram classic.  He added the following. “…I don’t think anyone who knows English will have too much trouble reading this ambigram — it’s the names of the seven classic colors of the rainbow, in the standard ROYGBIV order, with each word written in its own color: RED, ORANGE, YELLOW, GREEN, BLUE, INDIGO, VIOLET.

They all read both as shown here and also when reflected in a mirror (otherwise it wouldn’t be an ambigram, would it?).  And then, below the rainbow, as a cherry on the sundae (or a cherry underneath the sundae), there is one last line. What does it say?  Well, it says both “DOUG” and “2006″, the year in which I created this ambigram.  The last line both an oscillation ambigram, as well as a mirror-reflection ambigram…”

Mark Hunter
http://www.flipscript.com

There are so many great ambigrams, from so many talented people, it’s really hard to pick one “favorite”.  So, I’ll pick three that really stand out in my memory, for different reasons.  The first is John Langdon‘s “PHILADELPHA – CITY OF BROTHERLY LOVE”.  The complexity is mind-boggling, yet the design is instantly readable.  John clearly put a lot of thought and effort into this design, and it shows.

Another one of my favorites is Mark Palmer‘s DR JEKYL / MR HYDE.  I like this one partially because of the word selection.  If there was ever a character worthy of being displayed as two sides of a single design, it is this mild-mannered monster.  The design would serve quite nicely as the cover for a special edition of the book.

Finally, I love the way that Scott Kim goes the extra mile for his designs, adding complex animations and often creating new types of ambigrams that have never been seen before.  Here is an example of how Scott presents one of his vertical reflection ambigrams of the words TEACH and LEARN:

Teach / Learn Animated Reflection Ambigram

I would probably also give props to the creator of the “Princess Bride” DVD cover ambigram, but I have no idea who created it.

Patrice Hamel

http://www.patricehamel.org/insitu/

Patrice Hamel, a French ambigram designer, sent in this gorgeous example.

Brett Gilbert
http://www.55cards.com/ambigrams/

Brett Gilbert sent in the following example, and had this to say.

Nikita Prokhorov
http://www.flickr.com/photos/14588353@N07/sets/72157605407353219/

Finally, I decided to add my favorite ambigram. To be honest, the question “what’s your favorite ambigram” is fully loaded! There are so many ambigram artists, and so many fantastic ambigrams, that it really is hard to pick just one. So, I had to cheat just a little bit and pick the following three:

Why are they my favorites? A very simple reason: they were the ones that began my love affair with ambigrams when I first opened Dan Brown’s book several years ago.

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And that’s that! Some favorite ambigrams from some ambigram designer & lovers. If anyone has a favorite ambigram (especially one that is not their own) that they’d like to see in part 2 of this series, email me at nikita@ambigram.com.

The only way to understand the true essence of an ambigram is to read Ambigram.com, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, nonstop, ignoring any other commitments and responsibilities in your life. Sounds like a good idea, right?

Since June of 2008, Nikita Prokhorov has been the owner and contributor to Ambiblog, one of the most popular ambigram related blogs on the Internet.

His interest in ambigrams was first peaked by seeing the ambigram designs in Dan Brown’s thriller Angels & Demons, much like most of the ambigram lovers out there.  But he didn’t want to just be an ambigram designer; he wanted to explore the design process behind ambigrams and how different & unique it is for each artist.  Thus, his Ambigram blog, or “Ambiblog” was born.  It was created to not just showcase ambigram design, but rather to explore the process and get insight from various ambigram artists across the world.  Ambiblog will be merging with Ambigram.com and Nikita will be joining the Ambigram.com team effective Wednesday, April 29th, 2009.

In addition to his interest in the design process of other ambigram artists, Nikita is an excellent ambigram artist himself.  You can see some of his design methodology at work in this set of Christmas cards he created that says “Merry Christmas” whether it is read upright or upside-down.  Note his use of graph paper to ensure that the design is perfectly symmetric.

Nikita's "Merry Christmas" ambigram

Outside of ambigrams, Nikita is a freelancing graphic designer & a professor at Central Connecticut State University.  As a freelance graphic design, he has created work that was published by Logolounge and has written for HOW Magazine, one of the design industry’s most premier magazines.  His writing has also been published by The International Council of Graphic Design Associations (Icograda).

Nikita will be publishing a new article every Wednesday, and you can read his article series by clicking on his name under “Our Contributors” at the bottom of the right-hand sidebar on every page.  Please welcome Nikita on board, and come back every week to read what’s new on “Nikita Wednesday”, here at Ambigram.com.