Ambigram Font

UPDATE: See this post to download the now available font file.

Here I present the first version of my ambigram font. Except I cannot provide actual font files yet, just images for now. For license information read end of post.

Ambigram Font, GIMP, June 2009

This font allows for the creation of ambigrams for any word. It produces horizontal mirror ambigrams, also called lake reflection ambigrams, because if one were to hold the ambigram over a lake, it would be also readable in the reflection of the water.

Sample text

The lake reflection symmetry is rarely used for ambigrams and many I have seen are actually symbiotograms. Why is it so ill represented? It may be because it is regarded as somewhat trivial, which I admit it is. Surely if you have a full set of letters with a horizontal symmetry axis, turning any word into an ambigram becomes a piece of cake. The lake symmetry seems in fact the only one feasible for an ambigram font. However, as far as I know nobody ever attempted to create a full character set. Hence I recently decided it was about time that changed.

I first started creating the capitals, since many of those naturally have a horizontal symmetry axis. That does not mean they were all easy. For the F and N I had to overhaul my initial designs entirely, replacing them with better solutions. The L initially looked just like an E with its middle horizontal stroke missing—somehow with the more curving horizontals it looks more natural. The S seemed impossible at first glance, but luckily I managed to trick my way out of it. I had to make sure the M and W were distinct enough, since they tend to transform into each other when mirrored. And then there were the horrible U, V and Z, which required the greatest sacrifices. The V ended up tilted to the right with one stroke omitted, for the Z I had to resort to an old fashioned letter form and the U was just plain mean to me.

Initially I did not plan doing the lowercase letters, but they seemed like a nice bonus. They had their own problems though. Most prominent was the trouble with ascenders and descenders, since the symmetry dictated that they would be indistinguishable from each other. This especially was dramatic for the b, p, d and q, which are undoubtedly the weakest part of the font. I actually started out with the d and q switched, but decided they both fit in better with the other's role.

Finally I also added the ciphers and some punctuation. Maybe more special characters will be added in the future. If you have any comments on the existing characters or ideas for improving them, I'll gladly try and modify them a bit more.

That only leaves one problem. I have had some trouble finding any decent programs for turning the images into an actual font file. If anyone can point out one such program—preferably freeware/open source—I would be very grateful. It would either have to take images or svg-files as input, producing a common font format like TrueType or OpenType.

License

Using this font in other works would violate the 'No Derivatives' part from the Creative Commons License the image is released under, since you would have to extract letters from the image and thereby change its original form. That is not very practical for a font, so I hope to improve the license as soon as possible. However, I will first try to find a more practical format for distributing this font. Until then you may only reproduce the image 'as is' under the restrictions of the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License.