The Blackletter Virus

There is something bothering me slightly, which I would like to address here. Many of the ambigrams I see—especially those from beginning, inexperienced artists—are executed in Blackletter fonts. It is a trend that worries me and I will explain in a moment why. First some background.

I can think of two prominent sources for the Blackletter popularity. One is undoubtedly the set of ambigrams John Langdon created for Angels and Demons, all of which feature the Blackletter style. Because of the huge popularity of the book and film, these are for many people the first ambigrams they ever see and probably inspire them most. The other source is the tattoo art by Mark Palmer, a.k.a. Wow Tattoos, who seems to have embraced the Blackletter style for nearly all of his designs. That includes the easily accessible Ambigram Generator he created, which daily produces a large amount of ambigrams to be sold as design for a tattoo or other products.

So why then, if the Blackletter has established such an important place in the ambigram scene, should artists be cautious when using it?

My first issue with the Blackletter is its readability. To todays standards its legibility is fairly poor to say the least. Looking at some old texts written in Blackletter, you may notice some similarity with a bar code. The letters are tightly packed with many strong vertical strokes and you would hardly notice the difference would you turn the thing upside down. And similar to bar codes, most people have a hard time reading anything in Blackletter style.

However, the poor legibility is not just inherent to the typographic design only. The design may not have evolved into an optimal form yet, but at some point in history people were perfectly able to read it. Our main problem is that nowadays we hardly encounter this typographic style anymore. We have adapted to modern letter shapes, which makes it difficult to switch to unfamiliar looking letterings. Since the legibility of ambigrams is naturally impaired, a blackletter can make them even harder to read.

The second problem I have is that the abundance of ambigrams in Blackletter style gives people the impression that the Blackletter is some sort of requirement or magic formula for creating good ambigrams. On several occasions I have also seen Artists claim how the Blackletter is an ideal font for making ambigrams. This idea is in my opinion pure nonsense. I am a great supporter of using a wide variety of styles for ambigrams.

Moreover, it is usually better to let the ambigram solution influence the font choice. Some ambigram conversions work much better in one style than another. I frequently find that the hardest letter conversions determine what style to use. Not only does this help creating better ambigrams, it also keeps the door open for a myriad of styles, making ambigrams a diverse and interesting form of calligraphic art.

This is of course not a plea to abandon the Blackletter altogether. I am just saying that Ambigram artists should not forget its weaknesses and keep an open mind towards other styles as well.