180° rotational symmetryĪn ambigram is a calligraphic design that has several interpretations as written. The term was coined by Douglas Hofstadter in 1983.
Most often, ambigrams appear as visually symmetrical words. When flipped, they remain unchanged, or they mutate to reveal another meaning.
"Half-turn" ambigrams undergo a point reflection (180° rotational symmetry) and can be read upside down, mirror ambigrams have an axial symmetry and can be read through a reflective surface (like a mirror or a mirroring lake), and many other types of ambigrams exist.Īmbigrams are found in different languages, various alphabets and the notion often extends to numbers and other symbols. It is a recent interdisciplinary concept, combining art, literature, mathematics, cognition, and optical illusions. Drawing symmetrical words constitutes also a recreational activity for amateurs. Numerous ambigram logos are famous, and ambigram tattoos become increasingly popular. There are methods to design an ambigram, a field in which some artists have become specialists.
4.2.1 Vertical axis reflection ambigrams. 4.2.2 Horizontal axis reflection ambigrams. 6.7.1 Clothing and fashion involving ambigrams.6.4 Ambigrams in philosophy and cognition.6.1.5 Ambigrams in drawings and paintings. The word ambigram was coined in 1983 by Douglas Hofstadter, an American scholar of cognitive science, best known as the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the book Gödel, Escher, Bach. Hofstadter describes ambigrams as "calligraphic designs that manage to squeeze in two different readings." "The essence is imbuing a single written form with ambiguity". Īn ambigram is a visual pun of a special kind: a calligraphic design having two or more (clear) interpretations as written words. One can voluntarily jump back and forth between the rival readings usually by shifting one’s physical point of view (moving the design in some way) but sometimes by simply altering one’s perceptual bias towards a design (clicking an internal mental switch, so to speak). Sometimes the readings will say identical things, sometimes they will say different things. Hofstadter attributed the origin of the word to conversations among a small group of friends during 1983–1984. Prior to Hofstadter's terminology, other names were used to refer to ambigrams. Among them, the expressions "vertical palindromes" by Dmitri Borgmann (1965) and Georges Perec, "designatures" (1979), "inversions" (1980) by Scott Kim, or simply "upside-down words" by John Langdon and Robert Petrick. In March 2011, the Oxford English Dictionary incorporates this new word into its database ,Īnd the Merriam-Webster dictionary updates its own in September 2020. HistoryĪmbigrams published in The Strand Magazine, june 1908. 
Many ambigrams can be described as graphic palindromes.
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