Saturday, December 12, 2009

Ambigram

This is an ambigram, it reads the same and looks the same upside-down. It's a very clever thing to do.

Although, just like drawing and solving Rubiks' Cube, I'm sure there are mechanical skills to it which can be taught.

5 comments:

davyd said...

You are right that there seem to be certain 'rules' to ambigram creation that can be taught. What they are, i haven't exactly figured out yet.

Have you seen www.flipscript.com? They seem to have figured out a lot (if not all) of the 'rules'.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Thanks for the link. (Though as a link it just takes ya to my blog. The site is here.)

I guess the rules must be pairing of letters: "here's what you do when an E should look like an S upside down" etc.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

... a-ight, the site can't make one from either my first or second name.

Pascal [P-04referent] said...

It seems to rely in part on using little bits which may or may not be perceived as part of the letters, or conversely on making "almost-letters" which are recognized without being 100% complete. It's all based on a clever optical trick.
The human brain automatically "fills in the approximations" when it's trained for character recognition. Remember how some handwritings demand a lot of guesswork!

I saw on Wikipedia an iranian calligraphy that's an ambigram, spelling [in Arabic] "Muhammad - Ali". (The Prophet, and his revered son-in-law. United in one symbol. Pretty neat. I'm sure it has shiite believers in awe at the "coincidence".)
Then again, the Middle East was always a good place for "writing art".
I'm not sure it would be as easy to do in Chinese. But I might be fantastically wrong there!

I also once saw, in a fashion magazine, a T-shirt with the word "Love" written on it. Its reflection in a mirror reads "Hate".
What do you call this? A "mirrogram"? ;-)

During my last internship, I invented an "inside joke" with my buddies. I used to page them using, instead of the 4-digit number of the phone I was using, the number 07734.
Type it on a calculator, and then flip it. ;-)
I actually saw that trick in an old Tex Avery cartoon, where the horny wolf has a car with a flipping license plate at the press of a button. "Wink-wink nudge-nudge, baby!"

Pascal [P-04referent] said...

I bet I could design something by hand, even where this site has failed. Let me sleep on it. For a few weeks. ;-)

That site also fails if you try replacing your first name with "DIRTYOLDMAN".
So I can take my mind out of the gutter now! ;-)

I really like this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wave-particle.jpg

AH-HA! Found it: the Arabic Muhammad/Ali ambigram.