WORDPLAY Reflections on the Art of Ambigrams...

WORDPLAY Reflections on the Art of Ambigrams by John Langdon (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: $18.95; 224 pp.). So what are ambigrams anyway? Graphic designer John Langdon says ambigrams are “words that can be read in more than one way or from more than a single point of view.” What Langdon does here--with the help of some imaginative calligraphy--is turn some some interesting words upside down and make them come out the same way: words like science , ambiguity , symmetry , magnetic and time.

He pushes the point further: This is one man’s aesthetic and pragmatic exploration of words and their meanings and the relationship between words and images. He leads us to the idea of polarized opposites and harmonious complements. He is “interpreting the meaning of a word within the design of the word itself.

This is a lot of fun, but Langdon aspires to more than that. He tells us that “One can gain a trust in the order of the universe. Now this is pretty deep stuff, and some will be tempted to snicker. And yet . . . and yet . . . and yet. . . .