Ambigrams

A recent Wired magazine blog highlighted the resurgence of ambigrams: typographic designs or artforms that can be read in multiple directions or orientations with the same or different phrasing. I first encountered this unique form of typographic lettering in Douglas R. Hofstadter's incredible "Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern", a hefty book which blew my mind in high school with such ideas as "creativity as variations on a theme", anagrams (the title is an anagram of Mathematical Games), and gridfonts. Hofstadter defines ambigrams as "calligraphic design that manages to squeeze two different readings into the selfsame set of curves."

Now I've always had a deep appreciation of symmetry (or the appearance of symmetry) in the creative arts, as well as of codes, layers of meaning, and "words as images." Ambigrams are the perfect combination of all of the above. It's great to see the artform hitting the mainstream. Hell, you can even buy an ambigram tattoo! (they are actually pretty sweet designs). To symmetry (and reverse engineering)...

[image by Scott Kim]