WHAT MAKES AN AMBIGRAM WORK?
It’s important for ambigram designers to understand it’s almost impossible to predetermine the look of an ambigram. The style is almost 100 percent determined by the manipulations required to make it readable and aesthetically harmonious. Ambigrams are all about breaking rules, but a very high regard for the rules that govern typography will result in either a successful ambigram or just one more unsuccessful experiment to discard. I discard a lot. THE PROCESS I begin by writing the ambigram candidate upside down. Let’s take the word ENERGY as an example (fig. 1). I then try to imagine the Y as an E. Do they share any shapes or strokes? At first glance, no, they don’t. On the other hand, I can easily imagine an inverted cap G as a lowercase n. The ambigram designer must be open-minded about breaking any typographic convention, beginning with the structures. The willingness to mix cap and lowercase forms is also a requirement. I’ve encountered the E/R combination dozens of times before,
