All the ambigrams in my notebooks

A collection of hand-drawn ambigrams from personal notebooks

February 2, 2022

less than a minute

Sometime in October 2021, my friend Waqar Qamri suggested that I should apply to be a mentee in the Alphabettes Mentorship Programme. Thankfully, I applied, and I was assigned a mentor later that year. Alphabettes had kindly allowed me three months of time with a skilled mentor. I was not sure of what to do with this time, somehow, I decided to go through my reading list and I found a book named ‘Ambigrams Revealed’ by Nikita Prokhorov. I started going through it and decided to explore ambigrams for my project.

With the ambigrams, I started small. Literally. My mentor suggested I should try drawing instead of writing, which would require me to start sketching out larger forms. Grids helped. As we progressed, they also suggested that I needed constraints. So I was tasked to working on 4 words: guild, pillar, light, and ennui.

Small written letterforms for the word 'drip' with accents that would allow the symbol to be read the same when flipped vertically. — ‘Written’ letterforms for the word ‘drip’.

Drawn letterforms for the word Guild on a graph sheet.

I digitized my sketches using Adobe Illustrator. I followed methodology that I learned in Jessica Hische’s lettering course.

*ennui* – a feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack of occupation or excitement. I added a little bit from Pink Floyd’s Dogs to the graphic because I think it echoes the sentiment.