Ambigrammia
Between Creation and Discovery
$49.76
- Hardcover
320 pages
- Release Date
22 September 2025
Summary
On the history and creation of ambigrams, by a pioneer of the practice
In the 1960s and 1970s, a trio of imaginative individuals independently discovered that ordinary words and phrases could be given double readings by playfully distorting the letters composing them. These doubly readable words and phrases, if designed by an artistic eye and hand, could possess great visual beauty. Douglas Hofstadter named such calligraphic creations “ambigrams,” and over the decades…
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780300275438 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 0300275439 |
| Author: | Scott Kim, Douglas Hofstadter |
| Publisher: | Yale University Press |
| Imprint: | Yale University Press |
| Format: | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages: | 320 |
| Release Date: | 22 September 2025 |
| Weight: | 1.08kg |
| Dimensions: | 35mm x 184mm x 258mm |
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Critics Review
“Hofstadter [has] poured his inexhaustible love of tricky form into doodles he calls ‘ambigrams.’ … The product of tweaking and iteration, … they are often charming.”—Wall Street Journal
“Spellbinding and truly one-of-a-kind… . Written in a disarming, conversational tone that belies Hofstadter’s mastery of the subject matter, and lavishly illustrated with full-color diagrams on nearly every page, this is an absolute delight.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“A unique book.”—Microsiervos
Scott Kim
Douglas Hofstadter is College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor at Indiana University, Bloomington. His books include the Pulitzer Prize–winning Gödel, Escher, Bach; Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies; Le Ton beau de Marot; I Am a Strange Loop; and Surfaces and Essences. Aside from being a cognitive scientist focused on analogy-making, he is engaged in art, music, and translation.
Scott Kim is a puzzle creator and graphic designer who has been making ambigrams since the 1970s. His 1981 book Inversions: A Catalog of Calligraphic Cartwheels was the first book of ambigrams ever published.
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