In the summer of 2004, software entrepreneur Mark Hunter took a break from his job running a video company to create his first ambigram: a design that says his first name when upright, and his last name upside-down.
Planning to get the design as a tattoo, Hunter began thinking about the best body part for the design.
"I spent a few minutes on-line looking at anatomy charts, and discovered that the fingers are the most easily rotated parts of the body", said Hunter, "Unfortunately, I knew that if I got my fingers tattooed, I might be tempted to turn to a life of crime!"
Hunter instead decided to decorate his fingers in a slightly different way. He paid for a custom ring to be created out of Silver. Although originally intended to be only for his own amusement, the ring actually turned out to be the seed for his next venture, which would come several years down the road.
As he wore the ring, he heard hundreds of comments about it from people wherever he went. He kept hearing how great the ambigram ring concept would be for couples, and he ended up designing dozens of ambigrams for couples that he knew before realizing that his system of hand-drawing ambigram designs just wasn't scalable.
"I'm a perfectionist, so I would sometimes take the better part of a day just to create a single design", said Hunter, "I needed a better, faster way to create high quality ambigrams".
So, in the Spring of 2007, Hunter decided to write that system himself. His wife Laurie supported his decision, and suggested that he display a "Mark / Laurie" ambigram on the web site's home page (where it still is today).
Mark knew that creating an ambigram generator would be a substantial undertaking. No one had ever done it before. He started by training himself to look at ambigrams as a software challenge that had yet to be solved, and he set a goal to write a system to create in seconds what takes a person hours to design. That is, if the person could do it at all.
After a good portion of the core software had been developed, Hunter realized that the project was going to take years to complete. So, in the fall of 2007, he enlisted the help of ambigram artist Mark Palmer to provide some of the data for the database. Even with his help, development still took several person years of effort.
Finally, in June of 2008, the ambigram generator went "live".
The final product would contain more than a half-million letter pieces, three-tiers of software functionality, and would use no graphics at all. Instead, the ambigram generator would learn to "draw" just like a person, even preferring to draw upside-down about half the time (as a person would).
Several web sites now enjoy the ability to personalize their products using his unique ambigram software - including www.flipscript.com. The ambigram generator is currently being used to create ambigram necklaces, ambigram rings, ambigram apparel, ambigram household goods and ambigram tattoos, launching a new type of personalization that was previously all but impossible.
Still, despite the success of the software, Hunter remains highly accessible. If you contact FlipScript, its very likely that you'll be talking directly with him.