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An ambigram is a calligraphic composition of (letters, numbers, symbols or other shapes) that can yield different meanings depending on the orientation of observation. Most ambigrams are visual that rely on some kind of symmetry, and they can often be interpreted as . The term was coined by Douglas Hofstadter in 1983–1984.
Most often, ambigrams appear as visually symmetrical words. When flipped, they remain unchanged, or they mutate to reveal another Semantics. "Half-turn" ambigrams undergo a point reflection (180-degree rotational symmetry) and can be read upside down (for example, the word "swims"), while mirror ambigrams have axial symmetry and can be read through a reflective surface like a mirror. Many other types of ambigrams exist.
Ambigrams can be constructed in various Written language and , and the notion often extends to numbers and other . It is a recent interdisciplinary concept, combining Visual arts, literature, mathematics, cognition, and optical illusions. Drawing symmetrical words constitutes also a recreational activity for . Numerous ambigram are famous, and ambigram have become increasingly popular. There are methods to design an ambigram, a field in which some have become specialists.
Hofstadter describes ambigrams as "calligraphic designs that manage to squeeze in two different readings." "The essence is imbuing a single calligraphy with ambiguity".
Hofstadter attributes the origin of the word ambigram to conversations among a small group of friends in 1983..
Prior to Hofstadter's terminology, other names were used to refer to ambigrams. Among them, the expressions "vertical " by Dmitri Borgmann (1965) and Georges Perec, "designatures" (1979),OMNI magazine, September 1979, page 143, work of Scott Kim "inversions" (1980) by Scott Kim,.. or simply "upside-down words" by John Langdon and Robert Petrick..
Ambigram was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in March 2011, and to the Merriam-Webster dictionary in September 2020... Scrabble included the word in its database in November 2022.
The first Sator square palindrome was found in the ruins of Pompeii, meaning it was created before the Eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. A sator square using the mirror writing for the representation of the letters S and N was carved in a stone wall in Oppède (France) between the Roman Empire and the Middle Ages, thus producing a work made up of 25 letters and 8 different characters, 3 naturally symmetrical (A, T, O), 3 others decipherable from left to right (R, P, E), and 2 others from right to left (S, N). This engraving is therefore readable in four directions..
Although the term is recent, the existence of Mirror image ambigrams has been attested since at least the first millennium. They are generally palindromes stylized to be visually symmetrical.
In ancient Greek, the phrase "ΝΙΨΟΝ ΑΝΟΜΗΜΑΤΑ ΜΗ ΜΟΝΑΝ ΟΨΙΝ" ( wash the sins, not only the face), is a palindrome found in several locations, including the site of the church Hagia Sophia in Turkey.R. Langford-James, A Dictionary of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Ayer Publishing, , p. 61.Barry J. Blake, Secret Language: Codes, Tricks, Spies, Thieves, and Symbols, Oxford University Press, 2010, , p. 15. It is sometimes turned into a mirror ambigram when written in capital letters with the removal of spaces, and the stylization of the letter Ν (Ν).
A boustrophedon is a type of bi-directional text, mostly seen in ancient manuscripts and other inscriptions. Every other line of writing is flipped or reversed, with reversed letters. Rather than going left-to-right as in modern European languages, or right-to-left as in Arabic and Hebrew, alternate lines in boustrophedon must be read in opposite directions. Also, the individual characters are reversed, or mirrored. This two-way writing system reveals that modern ambigrams can have quite ancient origins, with an intuitive component in some minds.
Mirror writing in Islamic calligraphy flourished during the early modern period, but its origins may stretch as far back as pre-Islamic mirror-image rock inscriptions in the Hejaz.
The earliest known non-natural Point reflection ambigram dates to 1893 by artist Peter Newell. Although better known for his children's books and illustrations for Mark Twain and Lewis Carroll, he published two books of reversible illustrations, in which the picture turns into a different image entirely when flipped Point reflection. The last page in his book Topsys & Turvys contains the phrase The end, which, when inverted, reads Puzzle. In Topsys & Turvys Number 2 (1902), Newell ended with a variation on the ambigram in which The end changes into Puzzle 2..
In March 1904 the Dutch-American comic artist Gustave Verbeek used ambigrams in three consecutive strips of The UpsideDowns of old man Muffaroo and little lady Lovekins. (2025). 9780976888574, Sunday Press. ISBN 9780976888574 His comics were , made in such a way that one could read the six-panel comic, flip the book and keep reading.
From June to September 1908, the British monthly The Strand Magazine published a series of ambigrams by different people in its "Curiosities" column. Of particular interest is the fact that all four of the people submitting ambigrams believed them to be a rare property of particular words. Mitchell T. Lavin, whose "chump" was published in June, wrote, "I think it is in the only word in the English language which has this peculiarity," while Clarence Williams wrote, about his "Bet" ambigram, "Possibly B is the only letter of the alphabet that will produce such an interesting anomaly."Ambigrams Chump, honey, M. H. Hill, Bet, and five more words – Strand Magazine 1908
The lowercase letters o, s, x, and z are rotationally symmetric, while pairs such as b/q, d/p, n/u, and in some a/e, h/y and m/w, are rotations of each other. Among the lowercase letters "l" is unique since its symmetry is broken if it is close to a reference character which establishes a clear x-height. When rotated around the middle of the x-height l/ȷ or lo/oȷ it doesn't appear the same, but it does when rotated around its center like the uppercase-I. Thus, the words "sos", "pod", "suns", "yeah", "swims", "passed", or "dollop", form natural rotational ambigrams.
More generally, a "natural ambigram" is a word that possesses one or more symmetries when written in its natural state, requiring no typographic styling. The words "bud", "bid", or "mom", form natural mirror ambigrams when reflected over a axial symmetry, as does "", the name of the country Libya in Arabic. The words "HIM", "TOY, "TOOTH" or "MAXIMUM", in all capitals, form natural mirror ambigrams when their letters are stacked vertically and reflected over a vertical axis. The uppercase word "Ohio" can flip a quarter to produce a 90° rotational ambigram when written in serif style (with large "feet" above and below the "I").
Like all strobogrammatic numbers, 69 is a natural rotational ambigram.
Patterns in nature are regularities found in the natural world. Similarly, patterns in ambigrams are regularities found in . As a consequence to this "natural" property, some shapes appear more or less appropriate to handle for the calligrapher. Ambigram candidates can become " almost natural", when all the letters except maybe one or two are symmetrically cooperative, for example the word "awesome" possesses 5 compatible letters (the central s that flips around itself, and the couples a/e and w/m).
There is no limitation to the number of words that can potentially be paired up as hetero-ambigrams, and full ambigram sentences have even been published.
The "museum" ambigram is almost natural with mirror symmetry, because the first two letters are easily exchanged with the last two, and the lowercase letter e can be transformed into s by a fairly obvious typographical acrobatics..
Vertical axis mirror ambigrams find clever applications in mirror writing (or specular writing), that is formed by writing in the direction that is the reverse of the natural way for a given language, such that the result is the mirror image of normal writing: it appears normal when it is reflected in a mirror. For example, the word "ambulance" could be read frontward and backward in a vertical axis reflective ambigram. Following this idea, the French artist Patrice Hamel created a mirror ambigram saying "entrée" ( entrance, in French) one way, and "sortie" ( exit) the other way, displayed in the giant glass façade of the Gare du Nord in Paris, so that the travelers coming in read entrance, and those leaving read way out.
The book Ambigrams Revealed features several creations of this type, like the word "Failure" mirroring in the water of a pond to give "Success", or "Love" changing into "Lust"..
In Gestalt psychology, figure–ground perception is known as identifying a figure from the back ground. For example, black words on a printed paper are seen as the "figure", and the white sheet as the "background". In ambigrams, the typographic space of the background is used as negative space to form new letters and new words. For example, inside a Letter case H, one can easily insert a lowercase i.
The oil painting You & Me (US) by John Langdon (1996) belongs to this category. The word "me" fills the space between the letters of "you"..
Ambigram tessellations are word , in which geometry sets the rules.
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Scott Kim's " Infinity" works, and that of John Langdon " Chain reaction", are also self-referential, since the first is infinite in the literal sense of the word, and the second, both reversible at 180° and interfering around the letter O, evokes a chain reaction..
For example Douglas Hofstadter expresses the dual nature of light as revealed by physics with his perceptual shift ambigram Wave / Particle.
The ambigrammist artist John Langdon designed several totemic assemblages, such as the word "METRO" composed of the symmetrical letter M, then section ETR, and below O; or the sentence "THANK YOU", vertical assembly of T, H, A, then of the symmetric NK couple, then finally Y, O, U..
3-dimensional ambigram sculptures can also be achieved in plastic arts. They are Volume rendering ambigrams.
The original 1979 edition of Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach featured two 3-D ambigrams on the cover.
In Korean language, (bear) and (door), (ball) and (luck), or (water) and (ROM) form a natural rotational ambigram. Some syllables like (yes), (ticket/signage) or ( object particle), and words like "허리피라우" (straighten your back) also make full ambigrams.
The han character meaning "hundred" is written , that makes a natural 90° rotational ambigram when the glyph makes a quarter turn counterclockwise, one sees "100".
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In mathematics, a palindromic number (also known as a numeral palindrome) is a number that remains the same when its digits are reversed through a vertical axis (but not necessarily visually). The palindromic numbers containing only 1, 8, and 0, constitute natural numeric ambigrams (visually symmetrical through a mirror). Also, because the glyph 2 is graphically the mirror image of 5, it means numbers like 205 or 85128 are natural numeral mirror ambigrams. Though not palindromic in the mathematical sense, they read frontward and backward like real ambigrams.
A strobogrammatic number is a number whose numeral is rotationally symmetric, so that it appears the same when rotated 180 degrees. The numeral looks the same right-side up and upside down (e.g., 69, 96, 1001).
Some Calendar date are natural numeral ambigrams. In March 1961, artist Norman Mingo created an upside-down cover for Mad magazine featuring an ambigram of the current year. The title says "No matter how you look at it... it's gonna be a Mad year. 1961, the first upside-down year since 1881." Tuesday, 22 February 2022, was a palindrome and ambigram date called "Twosday" because it contained reversible 2 (two).
Ambigrams of numbers receive most attention in the realm of recreational mathematics.
Ambigrams with numbers sometimes combine letters and numerical digits. Because the number 5 is approximately shaped like the letter S, the number 6 like a lowercase b, the number 9 like the letter g, it is possible to play on these similarities to design ambigrams. A good example is the Sochi 2014 (Olympic games) logo where the four contained in 2014 are exact symmetries of the four letters S, o, i and h, individually.
Similarly to the ambigrams of letters, the ambigrams with other symbols are generally visually symmetrical, either point reflection or axial symmetry.
The international Morse code distress signal SOS is a natural ambigram constituted of dots and dashes. It flips upside down or through a mirror.
In morse code, the letter P coded and the letter R coded are individually symmetrical, like many other letters and numbers. Also, the letter G coded is the exact reverse of the letter W coded . Thus, the combination / coding the pairing G/W constitutes a natural ambigram. Consequently, meaningful natural ambigrams written in morse code certainly exist, like for example the words "gnaw" , "Dou" or "mom" .
In music, the interlude from Alban Berg's opera Lulu is a palindrome, thus the Sheet music made up of is almost symmetrical through a vertical axis.
In biology, researchers study the ambigrammatic property of by using visual representations of the symmetrical sequences.
The calligrapher, graffiti writer and graphic designer Niels Shoe Meulman created several rotational ambigrams like the number "fifty",. the names "Shoe / Patta",. and the opposition "Love / Fear".
The book cover of the 7th volume of the typography book Typism is an ambigram drawn by Nikita Prokhorov.
The American typeface typography Mark Simonson designed poetic and humorous ambigrams, such as the words "Revelation", "Typophile", and the symbiosis "Drink / Drunk".. The last one makes a visual pun when printed on a shot glass, sold commercially.
In 1968 or 1969, Raymond Loewy designed the rotational ambigram logo..
The mirror ambigram DeLorean Motor Company logo, designed by Phil Gibbon, was first used in 1975. In 1977, only the single 1975 prototype existed. There are multiple visible differences between the prototype vehicle and later production models, including the design of the front end.
Robert Petrick designed the invertible Angel logo. in 1976.
The logo Sun Microsystems (Microsystems) designed by professor Vaughan Pratt in 1982 fulfills the criteria of several types: chain ambigram, spinonym, 90° and 180° rotational symmetries.
The Swedish pop group ABBA owns a mirror ambigram logo stylized AᗺBA with a reversed B, designed by in 1976.
The Ventura logo of the Visitors & Convention Bureau's board, in California, cost and was created in 2014 by the DuPuis group. It uses a 180° rotational symmetry.
Other famous ambigram logos include: the insurance company Aviva; the acronym CRD (Capital Regional District) in the Canadian province of British Columbia; the American multinational corporation DXC Technology Technology; the two-sided marketplace for residential cleaning Handy;.. the brand name of French premium high-speed train services InOui;. the French company specializing in ticketing and passenger information systems IXXI; the century-old brand Maoam of the confectionery manufacturer Haribo; the American industrial rock band NIͶ; the Japanese food company Nissin Foods; the biotechnology company Noxxon Pharma, founded in 1997; the online travel agency Opodo in 2001;. the brand of food products OXO born in 1899; the video game Pod; the American developer and manufacturer of audio products Sonos; the American professional basketball team Phoenix Phoenix Suns;.. the German manufacturer of adhesive products UHU; the quadruple symmetrical logo Under Armour from the American clothing brand Under Armour ; the Canadian corporation mandated to operate intercity passenger rail service Via Rail in 1978;. the American international broadcaster VOA, born in 1942; and the Malaysian mobile virtual network operator XOX. The student edition of the Tesco Clubcard used 180° rotational symmetry.
In France, a mirror ambigram "Penelope Gate / benevole" legible through a horizontal axis became a meme on the web after its diffusion on Wikimedia Commons. Penelope Fillon, wife of French politician and former Prime Minister of France François Fillon, is suspected of having received wages for a fictitious job. Ironically, her name through the mirror becomes benevole ( Voluntary action in French), suggesting dedication for a free service. Shared tens of thousands of times on the social networks, this humorous ambigram made the buzz via several French, Belgian and Swiss News media.
Ambigrams are regularly used by communication agencies such as Publicis to engage the reader or the consumer through two-way messages. Thus, in 2021, male first names transformed into female first names are included in a Swiss advertising campaign aimed at raising awareness about gender equality. An intriguing catchphrase typography upside down invites the reader to rotate the magazine, in which the first names "Michael" or "Peter" are transformed into "Nathalie" or "Alice"..
In 2015 iSmart's logo on one of its travel battery charger went Viral phenomenon because the brand's name turned out to be a natural ambigram that read "+!" upside down. The company noted that "...we learned a powerful lesson of what not to do when creating a logo."
sometimes seduce observers with ambigram titles, such as that of Tenet by Christopher Nolan, by central symmetry. or Anna by Luc Besson around a vertical axis,..
In March 1904 the Dutch-American comic artist Gustave Verbeek used ambigrams in three consecutive strips of The UpsideDowns of old man Muffaroo and little lady Lovekins. His comics were , made in such a way that one could read the six-panel comic, flip the book and keep reading. In The Wonderful Cure of the Waterfall (13 March 1904) an Indian medicine man says 'Big waters would make her very sound', while when flipped the medicine man turns into an Indian woman who says 'punos dery, ery apew poom, serlem big'. Which is explained as, 'poor deary' several foreign words that meant that she would call the 'Serlem Big'. The next comic called At the House of the Writing Pig (20 March 1904), where two ambigram word Speech balloon are featured. The first features an angry pig trying to make the main protagonist leave by showing a sign that says; 'big boy go away, dis am home of mr h hog', up side down it reads 'Boy yew go away. We sip. Home of hog pig.' The protagonist asks the pig if it wants a big bun, upon which it replies 'Why big buns? Am mad u!', which flips into 'In pew we sang big hym'. Finally in The Bad Snake and the Good Wizard (1904 Mar 27) there are two more ambigrams. The first turns 'How do you do' into the name of a wizard called 'Opnohop Moy', the second features a squirrel telling the protagonist 'Yes further on' only to inform it that there are 'No serpents here' on his way back. In a 2012 Swedish remake of the book, (2025). 9789170895241, Epix. ISBN 9789170895241 the artist Marcus Ivarsson redraws The Bad Snake and the Good Wizard in his own style. He removes the squirrel, but keeps the other ambigram. 'How do you do' is replaced by 'Nejnej' (Swedish for no) and the wizard is now called 'Laulau'.
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Oubapo, workshop of potential comic book art, is a Comic book movement which believes in the use of formal constraints to push the boundaries of the medium. Étienne Lécroart, cartoonist, is a founder and key member of Oubapo association, and has composed cartoons that could be read either horizontally, vertically, or in diagonal, and vice versa, sometimes including appropriate ambigrams.
The artist John Langdon, specialist of ambigrams, designed many color paintings featuring ambigrams of all kinds, figure-ground, rotational, mirror or totem. Among other influences, he particularly admires M. C. Escher's drawings..
The Canadian artist Kelly Klages painted several Acrylic paint on canvas with ambigram words and sentences referring to famous writers' novels written by William Shakespeare or Agatha Christie, such as Third Girl, The Tempest, After the Funeral, The Hollow, Reformation, Sherlock Holmes, and Elephants Can Remember.
The Swiss sculptor Markus Raetz made several three-dimensional ambigram works, featuring words generally with related meanings, such as YES-NO (2003), ME-WE (2004, 2010),. OUI-NON (2000–2002) in French,. SI–NO (1996). and TODO-NADA (1998) in Spanish.. These are Anamorphosis works, which change in appearance depending on the angle of view of the observer. The OUI–NON ambigram is installed on the Place du Rhône, in Geneva, Switzerland, at the top of a metal pole. Physically, the letters have the appearance of iron twists. With the perspective, this work demonstrates that reality can be ambiguous.
Some ambigram sculptures by the French conjurer are reversible by a half-turn rotation, and can therefore be exhibited on a support in two different ways...
In 2015, an ambigram tattoo went viral phenomenon following an advertising campaign developed by the Publicis group two years earlier. The Samaritans of Singapore organization, active in suicide prevention, has a 180° reversible "SOS" ambigram logo, acronym of its name and homonym of the famous SOS distress signal. In 2013, this center orders advertisements that could be inserted in magazines to make readers aware of the problem of depression among young people, and the communication agency notices the symmetrical aspect of the logo. As a result, it begins to produce several ambigrammatic visuals, staged in photographic contexts, where sentences such as "I'm fine", "I feel fantastic" or "Life is great" turn into "Save me", "I'm falling apart", and "I hate myself". Readers noticing this logo placed at the upper left corner of the page with an upside-down typographical catchphrase rotate the newspaper and visualize the double calligraphed messages, which call out with the SOS.. These ads are so influential that Bekah Miles, an American student herself coming out of a severe depression, chooses to use the "I'm fine / Save me" ambigram to get a tattoo on her thigh. Posted on Facebook, the two-sided photography immediately appeals to many young people, impressed or sensitive to this difficulty. To educate its students, George Fox University in the United States then relays the optical illusion in its official journal, through a video totaling more than three million views and the information is also reproduced in several local media and international organizations, thus helping to popularize this famous two-way tattoo. Less fortunate, another teenage girl, aged 16, committed suicide, with her also this ambigram found on a note in her room, "I'm fine / Save me", reversible calligraphy today printed on badges and bracelets, for educational purposes.
Oulipo, workshop of potential literature, seeks to create works using constrained writing techniques. Georges Perec, French novelist and member of the Oulipo group, designed a rotational ambigram, that he called "vertical palindrome". Sibylline, the sentence "Andin Basnoda a une épouse qui pue" in French means "Andin Basnoda has a smelly wife". Perec did not care about punctuation spaces, but his creation flips easily with a classical font like Arial.
Visual palindromes sometimes perfectly illustrate literary contents. The American author Dan Brown incorporated John Langdon's designs into the plot of his bestseller Angels & Demons, and his fictional character Robert Langdon's surname was a homage to the ambigram artist.
The fantasy novel Abarat, written and illustrated by Clive Barker, features an ambigram of the title on its cover.
In Islamic calligraphy, symmetrical calligrams appear in ancient and modern periods, forming mirror ambigrams in Arabic alphabet language.
The word "OK" turned 90° counterclockwise evokes a human icon, with the letter O forming the head and the letter K the arms and the legs. The Norwegian Climbing Club (acronym "OK") borrowed the concept of this natural calligram for their official logo.
Multilingual ambigrams can be read one way in a language, and another way in a different language or alphabet.. Multi-lingual ambigrams can occur in all of the various types of ambigrams, with multi-lingual perceptual shift ambigrams being particularly striking.
Like certain with providential meanings such as "Listen / Silent" or "The eyes / They see", ambigrams also sometimes take on a timely sense, for example "up" becomes the abbreviation "dn", very naturally by rotation of 180°. But on the other hand, it happens that the luck of the letters makes things bad. This is the case with the weird anagram "Santa / Satan", as it is with a rotational ambigram that has gone viral phenomenon because of the and unintentional message it expresses. Spotted in 2015 on a metal medal marketed without bad intention, the text "hope" displays upside down with a fairly obvious reading "Adolf Hitler". This coincidence photographed by an Internet user was relayed by several media and constitutes an ambiguous image...
Burkard Polster, professor of mathematics in Melbourne conducted researches on ambigrams and published several books dealing with the topic, including Eye Twisters, Ambigrams & Other Visual Puzzles to Amaze and Entertain.. In the abstract Mathemagical Ambigrams, Polster performs several ambigrams closely related to his realm, like the words "algebra", "geometry", "math", "maths", or "mathematics".
| Message written with the Numerical digit "07734" upside down. |
Calculator spelling is an unintended characteristic of the seven-segment display traditionally used by , in which, when read upside-down, the digits resemble letters of the Latin alphabet. Also, palindromic numbers and strobogrammatic numbers sometimes attract attention of mathematician ambigrammists.
Ambigram and 3D ambigrams are two types particularly fun for the mathematician in geometry. Word in tessellations can start from 35 different fundamental polygons, such as the rhombus, the isosceles right triangle, or the parallelogram.
are used as a source of entertainment, but can additionally serve an purpose. The American puzzle designer Scott Kim published several ambigrams in Scientific American in Martin Gardner's "Mathematical Games" column, among them long sentences like "Martin Gardner's celebration of mind" turning into "Physics, patterns and prestidigitation"..
Symmetry in ambigrams generally improves the visual appearance of the calligraphic words. Hermann Rorschach, inventor of the Rorschach Test notices that asymmetric figures are rejected by many subjects. Symmetry supplies part of the necessary artistic composition.
For many , designing ambigrams represents a recreational activity, where serendipity can play a fertile role, when the author makes an unplanned fortunate discovery.
Ambigrams are mentioned in Metamagical Themas, an eclectic collection of articles that Douglas Hofstadter wrote for the popular science magazine Scientific American during the early 1980s.
In the first series of the British show Trick or Treat, the show's host and creator Derren Brown uses cards with rotational ambigrams. These cards can read either 'Trick' or 'Treat'.
, of which ambigrams are a part, cause ambiguity in different ways. For example, by rotational symmetry, as in the Illusion of The Cook by Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1570);. sometimes by a figure-ground ambivalence as in Rubin vase; by perceptual shift as in the rabbit–duck illusion, or through ; or again, by the representation of impossible objects, such as Necker cube or Penrose triangle. For all these types of images, certain ambigrams exist, and can be combined with visuals of the same type.
John Langdon designed a figure-ground ambigram "optical illusion" with the two words "optical" and "illusion", one forming the figure and the other the background. "Optical" is easier to see initially but "illusion" emerges with longer observation.
Several clothing brands, such as Helly Hansen (HH), Under Armour (UA), or , raise an ambigram logo as their visual identity.
Mirror ambigrams are also sometimes placed on , and , while are more adapted to rotational ambigrams. The conceptual art artist Mia Florentine Weiss marketed T-shirts and other products with her mirror ambigram . Likewise, the city of Ventura in California sells sweatshirts, caps, jackets, and other fashion accessories printed with its rotational ambigram logo..
The special edition paper sleeve (CD with DVD) of the solo album Chaos and Creation in the Backyard by Paul McCartney features an ambigram of the singer's name.
The Grateful Dead have used ambigrams several times, including on their albums Aoxomoxoa See p. 88. and American Beauty.
Although the words spelled by most ambigrams are relatively short in length, one DVD cover for The Princess Bride movie creates a rotational ambigram out of two words "Princess Bride", whether viewed right side up or upside down.
The cover of the studio album Create/Destroy/Create by rock band Goodnight, Sunrise is an ambigram composition constituted of two invariant words, "create" and "destroy", designed by Polish artist Daniel Dostal.
The reversible shot glass containing a changing message "Drink / Drunk", created by the typographer Mark Simonson was manufactured and sold in the market.
The concept of reversible sign that some merchants use through their windows to indicate that the store is sometimes "open", sometimes "closed", was inaugurated at the beginning of the 2000s, by a rotational ambigram "Open / Closed" developed by David Holst.
To explain visually the numerous types of possible ambigrams, Hofstadter created many pieces with different constraints and symmetries.. Hofstadter has had several exhibitions of his artwork in various university galleries.
According to Scott Kim, Hofstadter once created a series of 50 ambigrams on the name of all the states in the US..
In 1987 a book of 200 of his ambigrams, together with a long dialogue with his alter ego Egbert G. Gebstadter on ambigrams and creativity, was published in Italy.
John Langdon produced a mirror image logo "Starship" in 1972-1973,. that was sold to the rock band Jefferson Starship.
Langdon's ambigram book Wordplay was published in 1992. It contains about 60 ambigrams. Each design is accompanied by a brief essay that explores the word's definition, its etymology, its relationship to philosophy and science, and its use in everyday life.
Ambigrams became more popular as a result of Dan Brown incorporating John Langdon's designs into the plot of his bestseller, Angels & Demons, and the DVD release of the Angels & Demons movie contains a bonus chapter called "This is an Ambigram". Langdon also produced the ambigram that was used for some versions of the book's cover. Brown used the name Robert Langdon for the hero in his novels as an homage to John Langdon.
Blacksmith Records, the music management company and record label, possesses a rotational ambigram logo designed by John Langdon.
Born in 1946, Alain Nicolas is a specialist of figurative and ambigram . In his book, he performed many tilings with various words like "infinity", "Einstein" or "inversion" legible in many orientations. According to The Guardian, Nicolas has been called "the world's finest artist of Escher-style tessellation".
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