Ambigrams!!!

Thanks to the few people brave enough to rant about a bad job experience on my blog. I received many more to my email from brave souls who just didn't want to chance being outted on the internet. I promise you will all remain anonymous! And anonymous user posted this gem: www.notalwaysright.com A collection of customer service gone wrong. It has kept me in stitches since it was posted. Thanks, anonymous!
But the winner of my mini contest is...Esoterica! Thanks for the post! Please email me your preference - vice of your choice, or dinner date with me! (I know what I'm hoping for!)

And now for the long awaited post of ambigrams! You know, those uber clever designs that look the same front to back, or flipped left to right or upside down. They're like pallindromes, which I am also obsessed.
There are so many more. Rock band logos are very famous ambigrams. ABBA, Aerosmith, Blacksmith, Nine Inch Nails to name a few. And corporate logos like Xpedx, New Man, Edge, Truce Vodka, Delaurean, Wachova just to name a few. Tom Hanks helped bring ambigrams back in vogue with The Davinchi Code and the Oh-So-Mysterious secret society the Illuminati and their Oh-So-Mysterious logo that's (gasp!) the same EVEN WHEN YOU FLIP IT UPSIDE DOWN! And when they made the second movie Angels and Demons, they just had to do a repeat performance. I spoke to a tattoo artist who has tattooed this logo more than any single other design. Wow. Favorite ambigram subjects are like Yin and Yang. Opposite sides to a whole. Life and Death. True and False. Love and Marriage (ha, I'm just kidding, it's actually Love and Hate) War and Peace, Trick and Treat, Yes and No. And pairings of words that go together. Like Hope and Faith. Peace and Love. Graphic designer John Langdon (http://www.johnlangdon.net/) has made a career of designing logos that are ambigrams, and for a nice fee will design one for you (very often for weddings). It's one of the most difficult thigs for a graphic designer to do, and I've often questioned why. To make words perfectly symmetrical, you have to add so much "extra" stuff like flourishes, or use text that's harder to read, and to me, the message of who the company is gets lost in the wow factor. But any business owner may tell you that anything that gets you remembered is a good thing. I tried for weeks to make my name into an ambigram. Shouldn't be too hard - my name is very nearly symmetrical as it is. But, I've run out of time and patience, and couldn't wait another minute to post this entry. Sorry!
So rather than listing out each graphic, and talking about it, I'll just post my favorites here. They're self explanatory. I'd love to have more pictures, but my blog just isn't playing nice. And at the end, a wonderful example of ambigrams in real life. It's one of my favorite movies, and the cover contains one of my favorite design elements.
Happy designing!