you’re right, not woking is it.

The Ambigrammatic is interesting. Looks like they devised a single letter ambigram form for every pair of letters in the alphabet (including the same letter), then the program looks at the string(s) you provide and looks up the corresponding ambigram form for each pair of letters (right-side-up and up-side-down) and displays the ambigram. Crude, but effective in a rather mechanical way. Not all of the forms work real well.

I just designed an ambigram for a client who is going to use it for a tattoo. They’re not easy, but can be fun (ambigrams, I mean).

John Langdon is the master of this particular art form.

That is good work your RN pair is particularly nice. I recently did one for a tattoo too (added to the original post). Clients can be fun too (and not easy:). The work involved in working out even crude letter pairs must be enormous.
Tim

Out of curiosity, how is the paul mccartney ambigram not working. It was readable both ways.
?

My view is that the problems are with the rotation point (the two c’s) and the crossbar of the A/M and the way the y/P is formed, there are opportunities for improvement on the r. I feel that overall it needs more work on it to be effective. Also there is a missed opportunity (or built in redundancy) in the treatment of the title, in that it does nothing to support the rotational/reflective aspect of the ambigram.
Tim

our RN pair is particularly nice

Thanks. That was actually the part that came easiest for some reason. The rest, particularly the t, was trickier.

I agree with you about the McCartney solution. It feels weak, like they went so far and gave up. I don’t know that I could have done better (having not attempted it), but it does seem like it could be better. Anybody know who did it?

Wow, Tim and Mark nice stuff.

Tim, the Herron one is familiar because I was also contacted off-thread but was unable to solve that one so elegantly. (assuming that was for the same person ;) ) Excellent work!

Mark, three letters, w-o-w, on the Revelation.

Here are a few recent ambigrams; the first two were going to be tattoos, but don’t know whether the inkwork has been started.

further embellishment

bj,
That is an impressive use of lettering styles, was that part of the briefs or your reaction to the problem?
I guess that it was the same person and it did take rather longer than I thought (I started with a flowing script but had to abandon that). It is quite a responsibility designing something as permanent as a tattoo, ultimately I took the opinion that the client’s know their minds and own their bodies.
Tim

Hey Tim, thx. I emailed you, btw.
> was that part of the briefs or your reaction to the problem?

I’d say ’reaction to problem’ or ’reaction to puzzle’. More often than not, clients need to be gently educated on the benefits of a custom mark vs. something done in a font. So if a brief exists, hopefully for us, it’s a broad call to solve the puzzle with a custom lettering solution.
Thus, the lettering journey — from sketchbook musings, to illustrator doodles, to pleasing the client with a final piece — becomes an invigorating exercise in problem solving. It doesn’t always happen like that, but we can dream, eh? (sorry, I know this is preaching to the choir.) :D