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.
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
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)
Anna
Name of my daughter, born in 2000
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):
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.
François Ayroles
French author of comic strips and member of OuBaPo
(Ouvroir de Bande dessinée Potentielle)
Jan Baetens
Belgian professor of literature, poet, essayist, and creator with Bernardo
Schiavetta of the review Formules devoted to constrained literature
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.]
Marcel Bénabou
French professor of history, writer, and member of OuLiPo
Jacques Bens
French writer and member of OuLiPo
Jeanne Besnard
Patrice Besnard & Nathalie Poaty's daughter, born in 2008
[Click on the image to display a
larger version.]
Catherine Binet
French film maker and Georges Perec's last wife
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 ! »)
Jorge Luis Borges
Famous Argentinian writer, among my favorite authors
[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
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
Italo Calvino
Famous Italian novelist and member of OuLiPo
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.
The above CPT logos date back to 1996, but this alphabet was
drawn in 2001.
In 2018, the mathematicians and artists
Erik and
MartinDemaine
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)
Stanley Chapman
British critic, 'pataphysician specialist of theater, and member of OuLiPo
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.]
Michel Clavel
French author of remarkable constrained short stories
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.
El Desdichado
Spanish title ("The Unfortunate") of a French poem by Gérard de Nerval
Broken crown
Gérard Durand
Also known as "gérant du rare", French author of many palindromes,
including a book
Note that a slight modification suffices to
symmetrize independently the first and second names
Éléonore Hamaide & Étienne Jager
French professors of literature and mathematics.
Ambigram designed for their wedding.
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).
[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.
Gilles Esposito-Farèse
French theoretical physicist who loves playing with words, and
author of the present ambigrams
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).
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.]
Estelle Souche & Philippe Bruhat
French mathematician and computer engineer, creators of the oulipo
Web site &
mailing list
Luc Étienne
French professor of mathematics, 'pataphysician specialist of spoonerisms,
and member of OuLiPo
Patrick Flandrin
French mathematician and very sensitive writer
Formules
French review devoted to constrained literature
Frédéric Forte
French bookseller, poet and member of OuLiPo
Thieri Foulc
French publisher, writer, poet, artist, and Regent of the 'Pataphysics College
Paul Fournel
French writer and present president of OuLiPo
Anne Garréta
French professor of literature, writer and member of OuLiPo
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.]
Nicolas Graner
French computer scientist and witty player with words
[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:
Michelle Grangaud
French professor of literature, writer, and member of OuLiPo
GReCO (GRavitation & COsmologie)
My laboratory, within IAP (Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris),
from January 2002
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)
Patrice Hamel
French artist, actor, singer, producer, film maker, writer (including of
constrained literature),
and author of gigantic self-referential ambigrams called
"Répliques"
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.
Tom Johnson
American minimalist composer, and member of OuMuPo (workshop of potential music)
Jacques Jouet
French prolific writer, and member of OuLiPo
Pascal Kaeser
Swiss professor of mathematics and clever writer of constrained
literature
Killoffer
French author of comic strips and member of OuBaPo
(Ouvroir de Bande dessinée Potentielle)
Pierre Lamy
French professor and poet exploring many different forms
Étienne Lécroart
French author of comic strips and member of OuBaPo
(Ouvroir de Bande dessinée Potentielle)
Actually, Étienne Lécroart designed himself this much
nicer ambigram of his name:
François Le Lionnais
French mathematician, creator of OuLiPo with Raymond Queneau
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)
Hervé Le Tellier
French writer and member of OuLiPo
Bernard Magné
French professor of literature, and world's greatest specialist
of Georges Perec
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.
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!"
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).
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).
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]
Jérôme Peignot
French great specialist of typography, who invented
the notion of "typoem" and designed hundreds of them
Georges Perec
One of the greatest French novelists of the XXth century,
and member of OuLiPo
Ramanujan
Great Indian mathematician
[Note that this is actually not an ambigram, but a mere play with digits]
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.]
Raphaël
First name of my godson (and of an Italian Renaissance painter)
Robert Rapilly
French teacher and artist, author notably of splendid palindromic poems
Rémi Schulz
French modern cabalist, author of constrained literature and detective novels
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.
Stéphane Susana
French computer engineer, author of superb palindromic texts
Combination with the name of his girlfriend, Béatrice
Symétrie
French word for "symmetry"
Tangente
French (large-audience) review devoted to mathematics and mathematical games
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
twopages.
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):
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.
RobertMaitland'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.
MartijnSlegers'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!):
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:
[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:
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.
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.
See also my oulipian pages
and my pinacogram galleryGilles Esposito-Farèse
<gef@iap.fr>