Since we're all going in the same direction, might as well go together.

March 21, 2024 7:13 AM

Ambigram(Wiki): a calligraphic composition of glyphs that can yield different meanings depending on the orientation of observation. MakeAmbigrams will take a word or pair of words and generate an ambigram that reads the same right side up or upside down (or mirrored).
posted by Mitheral (7 comments total)

ambigram for mongo
posted by logicpunk at 7:39 AM on March 21 [1 favorite]

In comparison to ambigrams designed by humans, MakeAmbigrams does not make good ambigrams. It makes the rookie mistake of trying to map letters one-to-one -- for example, if you give it a word that starts with "m" and ends with "i", it'll use a single glyph for the entirety of both those letters, rather than inverting the "i" into just the first leg of the "m". This approach can work for carefully-chosen words and carefully-chosen fonts -- just look at that wikipedia page for examples! -- but in general it's a recipe for illegibility.
posted by baf at 8:15 AM on March 21 [2 favorites]

This is the kind of thing that neural network image generators really excel at. You can make two models simultaneously optimize an image and its reflection to look like different pictures or words.

Journal article and runnable notebook here: Visual Anagrams
posted by Phssthpok at 9:54 AM on March 21 [2 favorites]

the MakeAmbigram for Phssthpok looks pretty cool
posted by Phssthpok at 9:56 AM on March 21

Be right back, going to get some really bad tattoos.
posted by box at 12:10 PM on March 21 [1 favorite]

I got an interstitial malware alert for that domain, and recommend caution if visiting it
posted by churl at 12:43 PM on March 21 [1 favorite]

I have an ambigram of my name drawn by Douglas Hofstadter. That may be one of the coolest single sentences I can come up with about myself
posted by potrzebie at 2:15 PM on March 21 [4 favorites]