Saturday night is considered date night, movie night, clubbing night, or whatever you enjoy doing on your weekend to let loose and just relax. Well I have discovered the many pluses of a DVR and on a cold Saturday night indoors, I decided to stay home and happened to find a great classic ready for me to watch: “The Princess Bride.” This is one of those great guilty pleasure movies that not everyone really wants to admit that they love (especially guys) but everyone does. It’s one of those movies that’s right up there with “Labyrinth,” “The Neverending Story” and “The Dark Crystal.” Admit it, you love those movies too, but while I was watching, I decided to do a Google search for a little background information and how to finally obtain a DVD copy when I noticed something worth writing a post about.

Below is the cover for the 20th anniversary edition of “The Princess Bride,” and in the center of the DVD design is a fantastic ambigram for the movie title. I think that this intricate and well thought out way of titling is just a fascinating form of art that is not used very often. The reason for its scarcity is probably because these designs are so hard to create. Just in case you haven’t heard of these interesting artistic creations, ambigram also means inversion and is a graphic figure that spells out one or more words as it is presented, but also spells the same word or words if flipped or inverted in some way.

Ambigrams are used often in tattoo design since they can be read upside down. People choose them for foot tattoos since the foot is looked at from multiple angles. The great curves in the ambigram lettering are what allow it to be inverted. They look decorative; however they serve a necessary purpose by creating the other side of the letters.

I knew about these designs before but hadn’t thought about it in a while. If it weren’t for “The Princess Bride,” they would have remained in the back of my memory. Thankfully, this enjoyable movie has brought forth a fantastic design inspiration that seemed to get buried among all the high tech graphics that we use and love today. What a great Saturday night discovery! “Inconceivable!”