Dan & Ruth

Not sure how to classify this one, since the single repeating pattern that makes design is only readable when correctly coloured in, so the readability of the ambigram is not just about the shapes (as most of the other designs are).

Take away the colouring and the design would become a repeating and tesselating set of unreadable glpyhs (you might guess it was made of letters, but probably wouldn’t be able to guess what they said).

Which is a rather long winded way of saying that, yes, it is an ambigram, but it’s a weird one.

Indeed it’s difficult to now remember exactly how I managed to think this one up; I would certainly have started out looking for a much simpler idea. Somewhere amongst the scribblings I noticed a similarity between the basic letterforms of ‘Dan’ and ‘Ruth’, although only because of the lazy ‘th’ of my own handwriting.

Anyway, the pieces somehow fit, and when flipped round, repeated and judiously coloured in, made a design that read both ways. And no-one was more surprised than I!