What Does an Ambigram Tattoo Say About You?

A popular form of tattoo, the ambigram is essentially a word or symbol that when reversed or flipped still represents the same thing. Essentially it is an optical illusion, and draws you in with its flowing, memorizing script.

Finding ambigrams is fairly simple, there are many tattoo encyclopaedias containing words, phrases or other designs. Depending on how you look at the tattoo you may see different symbols or words, making it an interesting tattoo choice.

The forearm is one of the favored places for an ambigram tattoo, since it can be easily turned and flipped to give viewers the entire picture.

There are many different types of ambigram tattoos, here is a brief description of them:

• Rotational: in this design the word repeats itself as it is rotated around. Generally the rotation is 180 degrees but some designs offer 90 and 45 degree representations. While most often the rotated word will be the same, it can be different.

• �Mirror: This type of design reads the same when reflected in the mirror. These are also known as glass door ambigrams.

• Figure-ground: the spaces between the word form another word
• Chain: the words are interlinked to make a repeating chain, a word will begin partway through another word.

• Space-filling: much like chain ambigrams, but tiled to fill the 2-dimensional
• Fractal: similar to space-filling ambigrams except the tiled word spins off from the main and shrinks

• 3-dimensional: a design that will read many letters or words from different angles
• Perceptual Shift: this design is non-symmetrical but reads as two different words depending on how the letters are interpreted

• Natural: these ambigrams already have their own symmetry when written in their natural state, such as the word �dollop� when rotated.

• Symbiotogram: a word when rotated to 180 degrees can be read as a different word

Back to the complete list of tattoo designs and their meanings.