Make an Ambigram
An ambigram is a form of typographical art that allows one word to be read in a number of ways. The most common ambigram is rotational, or flipscript, and will read the same when the paper is rotated 180 degrees (i.e. flipped both vertically and horizontally). While it may seem like only a few words can easily be turned into an ambigram, with a few tricks you'll see that you can do it yourself with practically any word you like!
Steps
- Write out the word in print in the same case (e.g., all caps). You can use mixed cases, but it looks nicer when they are all the same. For this guide, we'll make the word "Survive at wikiHow" into an ambigram.
- Write the word backwards. Beneath your word, spell out it out with the letters in backwards order as in the picture below.
- Pair up your letters. Now that you have the words written out, you can see which letters you'll need to pair. In this case, we'll pair "W" and "W," "I" and "O," "K" and "H," and "I" and "I." Work with one pair at a time in the next steps.
- In some cases, the two letters in the pair will be the same, such as the "I" in Contribute to wikiHow, or every letter in a palindrome (see Tips). This usually makes the ambigram easier to construct and gives you a stable point to build around.
- Write the first letter in the pair. Decide whether working in upper or lowercase will give you more flexibility.
- Rotate the letter 180 degrees. If you wrote the letter on paper, you can just turn the page so that the letter is upside-down. If you're on a computer, there may be an option to rotate 180 degrees clockwise, or you can flip horizontally and then flip vertically.
- Make the rotated letter look like its partner. For example, to make a rotated "I" look like an "O," you can turn the line into an elongated circle. Leave the dot; when the "O" is readable, it will look decorative, but it will make it recognizable as an "I".
- Rotate the pair around to make sure your new letter looks like both original letters. What you should be left with is an image that looks like one letter in the pair, but when you rotate it 180 degrees, it looks like the other letter in the pair.
- Work through the other pairs. Put the new letters together to form the ambigram.
- Consult the internet. If this is too difficult, there are a couple of ambigram generators on the internet (such as FlipScript) that can do this for you.
Sample Ambigrams
Doc:Ambigram
Tips
- Working in pencil is best, because you have more control and you can easily erase for finer detail.
- Don't focus too much on the obvious letter pairs. Focus on the shapes of all the letters instead. It is often possible to create a letter form that looks like two or more letters when rotated. Wide letters like W and M are especially good for this.
- This is not to be confused with a palindrome, a word that can be read forward and backward. For example, "level" is a palindrome because when read backwards, it still spells "level". But, if you rotate the word 180 degrees, it won't look like itself anymore. When converting palindromes to ambigrams, every letter in the word will have itself as a partner.
- Try using different font styles (e.g. serif vs. sans serif, gothic lettering, etc.) if you become stuck.
- Sometimes you may be able to combine two letters to form a single letter when flipped.
- A handy trick is to shift the letter pairings one space to the left or to the right. The last letter can rotate to become an artistic flourish at the beginning of the word, or the first letter can rotate to become an artistic flourish at the end of the word. The payoff is that you may be able to avoid awkward letter pairs (for example, I and W) in the middle of the word.
- Try using a computer program, such as "Paint," as it can rotate the letters for you.
- Look at examples of how certain pairs of letters are "meshed" for inspiration in dealing with your own ambigram.
Warnings
- Doing this unsuccessfully for too long can cause headaches, especially if you are prone to frustration. Pace yourself by making ambigrams only as long as the activity is enjoyable.
