Level was a brand/logo idea I was working on for a project that I don’t think I’ll be using, but I hate to throw away an ambigram, so I thought I’d at least post it. As far as ambigram design goes, it’s definitely not the most difficult one I’ve designed, but I do like that it’s bold, clean, and legible. Maybe I can repurpose this in the future, but for now, just some eye candy.

This was my submission to the recent Ambigram Challenge. The theme was resurrection. This one says ‘ashes to dust.’ Unfortunately it didn’t win. The winner was submitted by the great ambigram designer, John Langdon.

This was a little challenge I created for myself: design an ambigram in the smallest space possible. I figured I’d try 16x16 pixels since it’s the standard favicon size and it’s smallest space I’ve ever had to design anything for previously. Obviously I had to pick a shorter word, so I thought ‘tiny’ would be appropriate. Turns out I was able to do it using only 38 pixels (not including negative space). I’ve never seen any claim of this before so I’m going to claim it now: This is the world’s smallest ambigram. If you can beat me though, I welcome a challenger. Takers?

This ‘Murphy’s Law’ ambigram was suggested by Nagfa. Nagfa runs his own ambigram blog where you can see a bunch of his work. He was also recently interviewed by Ambigram Magazine. Since he knows a thing or two about wordplay I thought I’d take his suggestions and give it a shot. I resisted the urge to check out his take on this adage until after I finished. But now that I’m done, check out Nagfa’s Murphy’s Law design and compare.

The first round of suggestions was fun, so let’s try another round. What word or phrase would make a good ambigram?

I designed this ‘Dave’ ambigram after a post on Typophile this morning. I thought it’d be fun to try to come up with some ambigram ideas on there, while I wait for the results of the resurrected ambigram.com challenge. Perhaps I’ll just put the question up here: Any suggestions for a good ambigram? And has anyone else on tumblr been designing their own?

I’ve tried a ‘matt’ ambigram before but for some reason I never thought of giving ‘matthew’ a shot until now. As soon as I started though, it all just seemed to click. Flip over a lowercase ‘ma’ and you can easily see the ‘ew.’ Then just combine ‘tt‘ into a ligature, flip it and you’ve got ‘H.’ Perhaps my next business card will feature this ambigram, unless I can figure out a way to flip ‘matthew’ into ‘mcinerney.’

P.S. I’m trying this ambigram an animated GIF of this one to see if more people get it without reading…

I can’t seem to stop with the ambigrams so here’s another one. This one: ‘infinity’ based on Bodoni. It seemed appropriate. Spin it and it just keeps going and going and going…

This is a rotional antonym ambigram of Better/Worse. I’ve posted both orientations so you don’t have to stand on your head. I might have made up the term antyonm ambigram but I’ve done it before with Give/Take and of course everyone has seen the famous Life/Death one.

This is an ambigram I designed of the word ELITE. This one was just for fun, no client/project in mind. I tried using the illusion of shadows to make this rotational ambigram work.

Since I’ve been obsessed with ambigrams recently, I can’t help but continue to draw them. This one is for a friend’s band called Antilove. I think it’s my favorite ambigram I’ve designed so far. And since I haven’t tried the question feature of tumblr yet: What do you think?

If you follow me on twitter, you might have seen versions of this ambigram during the past two days. I’ve finally finished it (or at least I’m done tweaking it for the moment). I’ve displayed it in both directions so you don’t have to do a handstand to get it. It’s an inversion of give/take. This fascination with ambigrams seems to be sticking with me. I kind of love the incredible freedom and restriction that comes with the form, in dissecting and reassembling letterforms, pushing them to brink of illegibility and reeling it back in. Anyway, I’ll be adding this to my updated portfolio soon.

I was going through my hard drive looking for pieces to add to my portfolio (I plan to update it pretty soon). I found another ambigram I designed a few weeks ago for my friend Jack. His name really is Jack Strong, not just a nickname. I thought the name would look good in some reversible gothic style, death-metal-esque lettering. It’s also somewhat appropriate that he plays bass in a metal band.