Gef's Ambigram Gallery


An ambigram is a word or a group of words which can be read in at least two different ways. The most usual are symmetric under a rotation of 180 degrees (i.e., they look the same upside down) or under a vertical axis reflection (i.e., they look the same in a mirror). The term "ambigram" was coined by Douglas Hofstadter and some of his friends; see pp. 274-277 of his excellent book Metamagical Themas (Basic Books, 1985).

The most remarkable artist in this field is Scott Kim, in my opinion. His book Inversions (Byte Books, 1981) is notably marvelous, and his Web site displays many of his calligraphic creations. Several other impressive ambigram sites are also quoted at the bottom of the present page.

You will find below various ambigrams of names that I drew mainly in 2001. [I constructed many more in the 90's, either of conceptual terms or of names, but I never scanned them nor redrew them on a computer.] Most of the following names are those of authors who like to play with words and literary constraints, and who always love the symmetry of palindromes. This is the reason why I wished to "invert" their names.

The word "OuLiPo" is often quoted below. It means Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle (in French), an international group of writers and mathematicians who explore all kinds of literary constraints. A mailing list "oulipo" is devoted to these authors and to the practice of old & new constraints. I constructed several of the following ambigrams for members of this list. You may also consult the many constrained texts that I wrote, but they are in French.

If you like ambigrams, you may also be interested by the related notion of pinacograms, i.e., portraits designed with the letters of the corresponding names. I started drawing them during the summer of 2005.


Jump List

Anacyclique
Éric Angelini
Anna E.-F.
Apache
F. Ayroles
Jan Baetens
Bateau ivre
Marcel Bénabou
Jacques Bens
Jeanne Besnard
Catherine Binet
Luc Blanchet
Jorge Luis Borges
Paul Braffort
H. Brandt Corstius
Italo Calvino
François Caradec
C.P.T. Luminy
Élisabeth Chamontin
Stanley Chapman
Alain Chevrier
Michel Clavel
Thibault Damour
El Desdichado
Gérard Durand
Éléonore & Étienne
Énigme
Gilles Esposito-Farèse
Estelle & Philippe
Luc Étienne
Patrick Flandrin
Formules
Frédéric Forte
Thieri Foulc
Paul Fournel
Anne Garréta
Gaultier 2
Nicolas Graner
Michelle Grangaud
GReCO
Claire Grivet
Patrice Hamel
Stephen Hawking
Tom Johnson
Joseph S.
Jacques Jouet
Pascal Kaeser
Killoffer
Pierre Lamy
Étienne Lécroart
François Le Lionnais
Jean Lescure
Hervé Le Tellier
Bernard Magné
Harry Mathews
J.-C. Menu
Kaiko Miyazaki
Ian Monk
Véronique Montémont
Mystère
Mythograms
Joyeux Noël
Oulipo
Ouvert/Fermé
Palindrome
Marc Parayre
Pataphysique
Jérôme Peignot
Georges Perec
Jacques Perry-Salkow
Raymond Queneau
Ramanujan
Raoul G.
Raphaël
Robert Rapilly
Chantal Robillard
Jacques Roubaud
Marina Saadia Otero
Olivier Salon
Bernardo Schiavetta
Frédéric Schmitter
Rémi Schulz
Singularity
Stéphane Susana
Symétrie
Ten words
Tangente
Valentin Villenave
Alain Zalmanski

Anacyclique / antiphrase
"Anacyclic" in French, synonym of palindrome (often used nowadays to mean the first half of a palindrome, whose inversion gives the second half),
symmetrized as "antiphrasis" in French, rhetorically saying the opposite of the intended meaning

anacyclique / antiphrase


Éric Angelini
Belgian journalist, specialist of self-reference, and author in collaboration with Daniel Lehman of hundreds of lipogrammatic texts (in which one or several letters are forbidden)

Éric Angelini

Éric


Anna
Name of my daughter, born in 2000

Anna Anna Anna

Anna Anna Anna

This simplistic ambigram illustrates how the elegance may be enhanced by working on the width of the lines and the shape of the letters.

With her family name (the central one using the same lettering as for me):

Anna Esposito-Farèse

[See also the pinacogram I designed for her]


Apache
Toy store that my daughter Anna likes. The official logo (whose author I do not know) is on the left, and my symmetrized version on the right.

Official Apache logo My symmetrized Apache logo


François Ayroles
French author of comic strips and member of OuBaPo (Ouvroir de Bande dessinée Potentielle)

Ayroles


Jan Baetens
Belgian professor of literature, poet, essayist, and creator with Bernardo Schiavetta of the review Formules devoted to constrained literature

Jan Baetens


Bateau ivre / drunken boat
Title of a famous poem by Arthur Rimbaud, and name of an electronic journal of literature
[Click on the image to display a much larger version as well as an animation.]

Bateau ivre / drunken boat


Marcel Bénabou
French professor of history, writer, and member of OuLiPo

Marcel Bénabou


Jacques Bens
French writer and member of OuLiPo

Jacques Bens


Jeanne Besnard
Patrice Besnard & Nathalie Poaty's daughter, born in 2008
[Click on the image to display a larger version.]

Jeanne Besnard

[See also the pinacogram I designed for her]


Catherine Binet
French film maker and Georges Perec's last wife

Binet Perec / Binet


Luc Blanchet
French theoretical physicist, specialist of gravitational waves; one of my colleagues of the GReCO laboratory (« Luc l'a cru engagé, l'ausculte, et Luc sua le gagneur calcul ! »)

Luc Blanchet


Jorge Luis Borges
Famous Argentinian writer, among my favorite authors

Jorge Luis Borges

[Several ambigrams already exist for this author. Scott Kim has notably designed a superb two-color one in his book Inversions, in which the two christian names are combined to form the family name; and Punya Mishra has also devised a clever tiling of the plane. As far as I am aware, the above ambigram is the first symmetric one of the full name.]


Paul Braffort
French computer scientist, song composer, poet and member of OuLiPo

Paul Braffort


Brandt Corstius, a.k.a. Battus
Dutch linguist who notably published a book entitled Symmys (Querido, Amsterdam, 1991) devoted to palindromes in all possible languages

Brandt Corstius / Battus


Italo Calvino
Famous Italian novelist and member of OuLiPo

Italo Calvino

[See also my pinacogram of his face]


François Caradec
French writer & biographer, 'pataphysician specialist of ethical alcoholism, and member of OuLiPo

François Caradec


CPT (Centre de Physique Théorique), CNRS Luminy, Marseille
The institute where I worked from 1987 to 2001

Centre de Physique Théorique, CNRS Luminy, Marseille

CPT CPT CPT

[See also my other logos for CPT]


Note in passing that the main idea of this last logo may be generalized to the whole alphabet. Each of the 26 letters is sketched below with at most one segment and one half-circle, both of fixed size and width. This could be called a "lipographic" alphabet.

lipographic alphabet

The above CPT logos date back to 1996, but this alphabet was drawn in 2001. In 2018, the mathematicians and artists Erik and Martin Demaine had a very similar idea —although not strictly the same. Independently of ambigrams, I strongly recommend a visit to their marvellous font gallery, combining brilliant mathematical concepts with extremely clever realizations.


Élisabeth Chamontin
French journalist, author of beautiful anagrammatic poems (in which all the verses use the same letters but in different orders)

Élisabeth Chamontin


Stanley Chapman
British critic, 'pataphysician specialist of theater, and member of OuLiPo

Stanley Chapman

[See also this animated version, and this second one on the OuTraPo Web site]


Alain Chevrier
French psychiatrist, literature scholar, and specialist notably of monosyllabic texts
[Click on the image to display a much larger version, together with the first name of his wife, Annie.]

Alain Chevrier


Michel Clavel
French author of remarkable constrained short stories

Michel Clavel


Thibault Damour
French theoretical physicist, one the world's greatest specialists of general relativity, member of French Academy of Sciences, with whom I had the honor of writing several research articles. I designed this ambigram in 1996, but I redrew it cleanly on a computer only in 2003.

Thibault Damour


El Desdichado
Spanish title ("The Unfortunate") of a French poem by Gérard de Nerval

Desdichado

Broken crown

El Desdichado's broken crown


Gérard Durand
Also known as "gérant du rare", French author of many palindromes, including a book

Gérard Durand

Note that a slight modification suffices to symmetrize independently the first and second names

Gérard Durand


Éléonore Hamaide & Étienne Jager
French professors of literature and mathematics. Ambigram designed for their wedding.

Éléonore & Étienne Éléonore & Étienne


Énigme / Surprise
French words for enigma & surprise. Ambigram designed for Olivier Salon's enigmatic garden (Word festival, La Charité-sur-Loire, France, May 27th--June 1st, 2009).

énigme / surprise énigme / surprise

énigme / surprise
[photo by Olivier Salon]

My first try was to obtain such a surprise by reflection of the word ambiguous (ambigu in French). The design presented interesting inversion ideas, but it was much less legible than the above énigme / surprise.

ambigu / surprise


Gilles Esposito-Farèse
French theoretical physicist who loves playing with words, and author of the present ambigrams

Gilles

Gilles Esposito-Farèse

The following GIF file is a "pixie": It displays its own size (1001 nytes ;-) in a standard 160x120-pixel image, using standard Garamond-48 small capitals. The only non-standard lettering is the butterfly signature, which is supposed to read "gef" (my initials). This signature is invariant under the same symmetries as the central number (up-down & left-right reflections, and rotation by 180 degrees).

1001

Two other "pixies", displaying their own sizes (9537 and 6132 bytes) in standard 320x240-pixel images, the first one using the freeware PocketCalculator font (standard size 24), and the second one the largest possible size for the digits. Both images are signed. [Click on them to see their actual 320x240 sizes.]

9537(719...) 6132

[See also my self-pinacogram]


Estelle Souche & Philippe Bruhat
French mathematician and computer engineer, creators of the oulipo Web site & mailing list

Estelle & Philippe


Luc Étienne
French professor of mathematics, 'pataphysician specialist of spoonerisms, and member of OuLiPo

Luc Étienne


Patrick Flandrin
French mathematician and very sensitive writer

Patrick Flandrin


Formules
French review devoted to constrained literature

Formules

Formules


Frédéric Forte
French bookseller, poet and member of OuLiPo

Frédéric Forte


Thieri Foulc
French publisher, writer, poet, artist, and Regent of the 'Pataphysics College

Thieri Foulc


Paul Fournel
French writer and present president of OuLiPo

Fournel

Paul Fournel


Anne Garréta
French professor of literature, writer and member of OuLiPo

Anne Garréta


Gaultier2
Advertisement proposal for a perfume brand. The reflection of the line name is the French word for "oneiric".
Design rejected, as John Langdon writes for some of his wonderful logos. ;-)
[Click on this thumbnail to display a much larger version.]

Gaultier 2 / onirique


Nicolas Graner
French computer scientist and witty player with words

Nicolas Graner

[See also this animated version]

Presents for his 40th birthday ("40 ans" in French), together with the 35th of one of his friends, Yves Niquil:

Nicolas Graner & Yves Niquil


Nicolas Graner 40 ans & Yves Niquil 35 ans


Michelle Grangaud
French professor of literature, writer, and member of OuLiPo

Michelle Grangaud


GReCO (GRavitation & COsmologie)
My laboratory, within IAP (Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris), from January 2002

GReCO


Claire Grivet
French computer scientist and word player, whose name is a "palindrot13" (invariant when simultaneously read backward and shifted by 13 letters in the alphabet)

Claire Grivet


Patrice Hamel
French artist, actor, singer, producer, film maker, writer (including of constrained literature), and author of gigantic self-referential ambigrams called "Répliques"

Patrice Hamel


Stephen Hawking
Famous British theoretical physicist. I designed this ambigram on July 21st, 2004, while I was waiting for his conference. I also found a symmetrization of his first name, but I did not yet redraw it on a computer.

Hawking Hawking Hawking


Tom Johnson
American minimalist composer, and member of OuMuPo (workshop of potential music)

Tom Johnson


Joseph
Name of Stéphane & Béatrice Susana's son, born in 2006

Joseph Tiling of the plane with Joseph's ambigram

[See also the pinacogram I designed for him]


Jacques Jouet
French prolific writer, and member of OuLiPo

Jacques Jouet


Pascal Kaeser
Swiss professor of mathematics and clever writer of constrained literature

Pascal Kaeser


Killoffer
French author of comic strips and member of OuBaPo (Ouvroir de Bande dessinée Potentielle)

Killoffer


Pierre Lamy
French professor and poet exploring many different forms

Pierre Lamy


Étienne Lécroart
French author of comic strips and member of OuBaPo (Ouvroir de Bande dessinée Potentielle)

Étienne Lécroart


Actually, Étienne Lécroart designed himself this much nicer ambigram of his name:

Lécroart Étienne



François Le Lionnais
French mathematician, creator of OuLiPo with Raymond Queneau

François Le Lionnais


Jean Lescure
French member of OuLiPo, who notably invented the "poems for stutterers" and the "S+7" method (replace each substantive by the seventh which follows it in a given dictionary)

Jean Lescure


Hervé Le Tellier
French writer and member of OuLiPo

Hervé Le Tellier


Bernard Magné
French professor of literature, and world's greatest specialist of Georges Perec

Bernard Magné

[See also the pinacogram I designed for him]


Harry Mathews
American novelist and member of OuLiPo

Harry Mathews


Jean-Christophe Menu
French author of comic strips and member of OuBaPo (Ouvroir de Bande dessinée Potentielle)

Menu

[Note that I actually designed this ambigram for the wedding banquet of Estelle Souche & Philippe Bruhat!]


Kaiko Miyazaki
Japanese Ph.D. student working on Marguerite Duras and Georges Perec.
Note that different symmetries are used for the first & family names, but that a homogeneous Japanese-like lettering has been designed.

Kaiko Miyazaki


Ian Monk
British translator and member of OuLiPo

Ian Monk

[See also the pinacogram I designed for him]


Véronique Montémont
French linguist and statistician, specialist of Perec & Roubaud

Véronique Montémont


Mystère
French word for "mystery"

Mystère


Seven "mythograms"
in French, on a separate Web page (click on this thumbnail)

Sisyphe / Narcisse / Orphée / OEdipe / Médée / Ariane / Atlas


Joyeux Noël
"Merry Christmas" in French

Joyeux Noël


Oulipo
Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle, a group of writers and mathematicians founded by François Le Lionnais and Raymond Queneau

Oulipo


Ouvert/Fermé
My French translation of David Holst's Open/Closed poster

Ouvert/Fermé

Attempt to use another symmetry for the same pair of words (suggested by Frédéric Schmitter)

Ouvert/Fermé


Actually, Frédéric Schmitter found a little later this more legible solution (drawn by himself)

Ouvert/Fermé



Palindrome
A word, verse, or sentence, that is the same when read backward or forward [Webster Dictionary]; as "A man, a plan, a canal: Panama!"

palindrome


Marc Parayre
French author of constrained short stories, specialist of Georges Perec, and co-translator of Perec's lipogrammatic novel « la Disparition » in Spanish (« el Secuestro », without any A).

Marc Parayre

Stereoscopic version: try to superpose the two blobs by looking "farther than the screen", and a 3-dimensional image of the crown will appear (thanks to Robert Rapilly who suggested me the application of this idea to ambigrams).

Marc Parayre


Pataphysique
The French writer Alfred Jarry defined it as the "science of imaginary solutions". 'Pataphysics is to metaphysics what metaphysics is to physics. [Ambigram designed for the 'pataphysicians Thieri Foulc and Alain Zalmanski]

Pataphysique


Jérôme Peignot
French great specialist of typography, who invented the notion of "typoem" and designed hundreds of them

Jérôme Peignot


Georges Perec
One of the greatest French novelists of the XXth century, and member of OuLiPo

Georges Perec

[See also this animated version, as well as the pinacogram I designed later]


Jacques Perry-Salkow
French jazzman, author of superb constrained texts, and notably of remarkable palindromes

Jacques Perry-Salkow

[See also the pinacogram I designed for him]


Raymond Queneau
Famous French poet and novelist, creator of OuLiPo with François Le Lionnais

... Raymond Queneau ...

Raymond Queneau

[See also this older version]


Ramanujan
Great Indian mathematician
[Note that this is actually not an ambigram, but a mere play with digits]

Ramanujan = 12011301221012


Raoul
Name of Martin Granger & Yasmine Damiens' son (and Élisabeth Chamontin's grandson), born in 2007
[Click on the image to display a larger version.]

Raoul


Raphaël
First name of my godson (and of an Italian Renaissance painter)

Raphaël


Robert Rapilly
French teacher and artist, author notably of splendid palindromic poems

Robert Rapilly

[See also the pinacogram I designed for him]


Chantal Robillard
French poet and writer of constrained literature

Chantal Robillard

[See also the pinacogram I designed for her]


Jacques Roubaud
French mathematician, poet, novelist, translator, and member of OuLiPo

Jacques Roubaud


Marina Saadia Otero
Argentinian mathematician who is my wife

Marina

Marina Saadia Otero

[See also the pinacogram I designed for her]


Olivier Salon
French professor of mathematics and member of OuLiPo

Olivier Salon


Bernardo Schiavetta
Argentinian psychiatrist, poet, and creator with Jan Baetens of the review Formules devoted to constrained literature

Bernardo Schiavetta


Frédéric Schmitter
French creator of remarkable anagrams and palindromes

Frédéric Schmitter

[See also the pinacogram I designed for him]


Rémi Schulz
French modern cabalist, author of constrained literature and detective novels

Rémi Schulz


Singularity
Word proposed by the great designer John Langdon for the Nagfa Ambigram Challenge (NAC) of February-March 2007.
Below is my own (Gef) humble solution, but please visit Nagfa's site for much better ones found by friends ambigrammists.

Singularity


Stéphane Susana
French computer engineer, author of superb palindromic texts

Stéphane Susana

Combination with the name of his girlfriend, Béatrice

Béatrice & Stéphane


Symétrie
French word for "symmetry"

symétrie


Tangente
French (large-audience) review devoted to mathematics and mathematical games

Tangente


Ten French words
extracted from the titles of Raymond Queneau's books, on a separate Web page (click on this thumbnail)

dimanche, vol, campagne, exercer, bleu, chiendent, rude, mille, instant, courir


Valentin Villenave
French composer and pianist, creator of OuMuPo (workshop of potential music)

Valentin Villenave

[See also the pinacogram I designed for him]


Alain Zalmanski
French chemist and puzzle collector who loves playing with words

Alain Zalmanski

[See also this animated version, a SVG variant, the pinacogram I designed for him, as well as their simulnaneous SVG animations]


Ambigram Links

In my opinion, Scott Kim is the Master of the Art of Ambigram. His inversions are both clear and esthetic, and he always finds original ways to deform letters or extend the notion of ambigram.

John Langdon is a professional designer who started drawing ambigrams even before Scott Kim, in the 70's. His work is also remarkably nice, and his new Web site now displays several of his creations. A few others are also available on these two pages.

Douglas Hofstadter, who coined the word "ambigram", has designed several thousands of them, always characterized by his creativity and his love for intelligent surprises. The few of them which were printed in his book "Metamagical Themas" (1985) were enough to trigger many vocations for this art (including mine). [François Almaleh's site displays some, but unfortunately not very well scanned.] Hofstadter later published a full book in Italian about them, "Ambigrammi" (1987), and keeps designing many, for instance to illustrate his scientific talks! I did not find any website displaying many of his creations, but here is an online journal where you will find some more. On August 2nd, 2010, the great Hofstadter himself offered me this excellent ambigram of my name (click on it to enlarge):

Doug / Gilles Esposito-Farèse / 2010

Patrice Hamel is le French professional ambigraphist. He looks for purity in his designs, and almost always uses fixed-width lines. The calligraphic results are thus usually colder than those of Kim or Langdon, but they are very legible and above all never gratuitous. He systematically looks for self-referent words, and displays them in gigantic sizes or as animated lightbeams.

Punya Mishra is also one of the greatest artists of ambigrams. Here is the present address of his superb site, which is as rich as Scott Kim's one.

Robert Maitland's site proposes even more ambigrams than Kim and Mishra together. All of them are nice, and some are wonderful.

Hud Nordin designed many very legible ambigrams of names, notably those of several great physicists.

Kevin Pease's ambigrams are sometimes difficult to read, but their graphic inventiveness is exceptional. He even managed to invert the whole first strophe of Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky; this is incredible!

Tal Kol's ambigrams are also rather difficult to decipher, but they are wonderful from a graphical viewpoint.

Brett James Gilbert has also designed wonderful ambigrams of names. His calligraphy for Andrea is particularly interesting, as it uses the same glyph for all the letters. [This idea is similar, in a more complex way, to a logo I drew long ago for my former Institute.]

Jack Kramer (a.k.a. Xekaxm) and his son John both propose many nice colorful drawings. [This site is now down. Please contact me if you know its new address!]

Patrice Besnard's ambigrams are either in French or proper names, and they are not very numerous yet. However, they are incredibly nice and clever, and their animations make them superbly pedagogical. I also warmly recommend the rest of his site, devoted to constrained literature (in French) and magic tricks.

The painter Basile Morin also designed splendid ambigrams of French words or proper names. Some of them are colorful or animated.

Frédéric Schmitter's ambigrams always exhibit a vertical axis (mirror) symmetry, probably because he is one of the world's greatest authors of palindromes.

Nagfa, i.e., Naguib Ngadnan and Fadilah Abdul Rahim, have developed a remarkable blog devoted to ambigrams. Their own designs are among the best on the Web, often with professional designs in the spirit of John Langdon. They also compile an up-to-date list of ambigram sites, and organize a friendly challenge to "promote unity among ambigram enthusiasts" -- as they nicely write. [Beware that this site may not work with older browsers.]

Nikita Prokhorov also started in 2008 an excellent blog devoted to ambigrams and the technique to design them. It does not only displays many drawings by different authors (including himself), but also proposes very pedagogical articles.

Stefan Gustavson only displays ambigrams of names (as in my present page), but they are particularly esthetic and legible.

Robert Petrick is historically one of the first ambigram designers, with John Langdon. His work combines color & three-dimensional effects, and it is technically impressive. His drawings are remarkable, but in my opinion, his site is globally less interesting than the previous ones from a purely ambigraphic viewpoint.

Martijn Slegers's ambigrams are mostly hand-drawn, but their calligraphy is always very nice. His ambigrams are also available on flickr.

John Wilson designed several joyful ambigrams of names, using angular lettering and a nice gradation of colours.

Keith Enevoldsen proposes the tricky generalization of 4-word ambigrams, but they are of course more difficult to decipher than usual (2-word) ones.

Mariano Tomatis first gives a pedagogical introduction in Italian about ambigrams, then shows several of his superb achievements.

Iván Skvarca also designed several nice and interesting Spanish ambigrams. In September 2001, he sent me this very joyful inversion of my first name (whereas my own version was rather austere!):

Gilles

Carlos Carpio Hernández's site displays an increasing number of nice ambigrams, either of names or of Spanish words. Most of them are scanned from his freehand drawings, but the latest ones are more cleanly designed on a computer.

Alberto Portacio Apicella designed many colorful ambigrams, notably of other ambigraphists' names. He does not focus only on the most standard rotational symmetry, but also explores very cleverly the foreground/background ambiguity. In December 2005, he kindly sent me 14 (!) ambigrams related to my name, that you may consult in his second gallery. Here are two examples of his superb gifts:

Gilles Esposito-Farèse Gilles / Marina
[Beware however that his site may not work with older browsers, and that his Internet Service Provider spoils it a little with its pop-up advertisements.]
His new ambigrams are now also available on his blog Ambigramanía (and without advertisements ;-).

Homero Larrain's blog displays wonderful ambigrams, including his own designs which are truly impressive. [Beware however that older browsers may display it rather strangely.] In April 2006, he sent me this ambigram of my first name, different from the various versions which had already been found, notably by its nice capital G:

Gilles

Homero Larrain also designed a superb self-portrait as a pinacogram.

Marcelo Kunimoto's site displays a few of his clever ambigrams in Portuguese, and also proposes a short but nice gallery of other ambigraphists.

Üstün Alsaç's site proposes many impressive galleries of his Turkish ambigrams. Unfortunately, his sites seems down, now.

Cihan Altay has also designed nice Turkish ambigrams and calligraphy experiments. His links to other ambigram sites are also quite up to date.

Mark Palmer sells ambigram tatoos. Although I do not like much the commercial spirit of his site, I must admit his designs are excellent. He is one of the ambigraphists you should contact if you are looking for tatoos.

Mark Hunter also sells his superb ambigrams on his commercial site FlipScript. I particularly appreciate his self-referential explanations. In April 2011, he sent me (for free ;-) this elegant circle inverting my first name, Gilles, as my second family name, Farèse.

Gilles / Farese

Joël Guenoun's animated graphic works go beyond the mere notion of ambigram, but they are so nice that they obviously deserve a visit!

The "half-word poetry" created by Pierre Fourny for his company ALIS is also very close to the notion of ambigram. [Note that Flash Player is required to visit this site.]

Alain Nicolas designs superb Escher-like tilings. Some of them use ambigrams as tiles, like this maze, this self-referential tile, or the name of Kevin Lee (creator of a tesselation program).

Sean M. Burke performed a systematic analysis of "Braille ambigrams", i.e., of symmetric pairs of words when written in Braille.

Some galleries of various ambigraphists are also accessible on the Web. For instance, this advertisement for a book by Burkard Polster proposes several very interesting variations on the notion of ambigram. The Chinese word for "sea" (by David Moser) and the face of the "liar" (by Paul Agule) are notably exceptional.

David Holst's "Ambigram Website" also proposes a splendid gallery. His "Concepts Collection" is particularly interesting, and his own "Open/Closed" poster is remarkably clever. On the other hand, almost all the addresses of his link page are outdated. His idea of an automatic ambigram generator is outstanding, but its results are unfortunately rather weak.

There exist many other sites displaying a few ambigrams, and the present list cannot be exhaustive. [This is even more true nowadays, because the glory of Dan Brown's novels has triggered many new vocations for the art of ambigrams; I am afraid this list of links will not be able to follow the impressive expansion of this world!] Let me just mention the page of my friend Nicolas Graner, who not only inverted his name in a very clever way, but also managed to build an ambigrammatic URL (Web address)! Other sites may be found by using a search engine, for instance with Google.


Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional See also my oulipian pages and my pinacogram gallery

Gilles Esposito-Farèse <gef@iap.fr>

Last modified : July 20th, 2021