ambigram (noun): A typographical design or artform that may be read as one or more words, not only as presented, but also from another viewpoint, direction or orientation.
File this one under ‘simple but effective’.
The word itself has no significance; the reason I have included it in the gallery is because I really liked the central ‘RI’ ligature and thought that the form of the ‘G/D’ glpyh was pleasing in both orientations.
It’s a design that ‘just works’ without having to try too hard. I think that I often get too distracted by an apparent need to engineer readability using complex letterforms with deliberate distortions and heavily contrasting stroke widths, and miss the true goal: simplicity.
Perhaps the first rule of ambigram design should be ‘If it seems too difficult, you’ve probably made it too complicated!’ As someone famous (or at least wise) once said:
‘Perfection is not attained when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to take away.’
