For those still stuck on the middle-school connotations of "language arts," John Langdon is here to illuminate you. In 1992, Langdon turned the standard views of art and language upside down with his book, Wordplay. After going out of print in 1994, Wordplay's brand-new re-release includes a full-color section showcasing his talent for ambigrams, or words that employ symmetry—and a certain amount of ambiguity—to appear the same right side up and upside down. The book also includes new paintings and photographs and an introduction by author Dan Brown.

Langdon, a Drexel professor known for his cover and interior art for Brown's novel Angels and Demons, and as the namesake of the main character in The Da Vinci Code, has carved a niche for himself as an ambigram artist, during his 25-year career in typography and graphic design. At his Fairmount home, accompanied by his rotund orange tabby, Langdon took a few minutes to talk to City Paper about Wordplay, his art and his quibbles with the city of brotherly love.

City Paper: You said ambigrams started out as a hobby?

John Langdon:Hobby and fine art work start out as things you do for yourself. By the time I started doing ambigrams, though, I definitely thought of them as my artwork. I always had a sense they were going somewhere, but for quite a long time I had no idea where.

CP: How did you start working with Dan Brown?

JL: Dan's father bought a copy of Wordplay when it first came out in 1992, and he and I actually corresponded briefly. Some time later he called and said his son was working on a project and wondered if I would do an ambigram for him. That's when I designed the Angels and Demons ambigram. It's taken my work from the point of relative obscurity… I've been getting an unbelievable amount of requests for work. The reason that I hadn't been creating new work all along was that I had, in my mind, moved on from that. I had begun a painting career. Dan Brown made my ambigram career a lot more exciting.

CP: In Wordplay, you have an ambigram of "The City of Brotherly Love." What's the story behind that?

JL: In 2000, there was an art show at the Art Institute. I came up with that ambigram, and I thought, "Hey, that's got to be one of the most saleable things I've ever done," yet my efforts to get anybody in the city to pay attention have gotten zero response. I approached the bureau of Philadelphia marketing and promotion or something, and they told me, "We're not the city of brotherly love anymore, we're the city that loves you back." I had a painting in the City Hall show about 6 months ago, and I left a stack of postcards with the Philadelphia ambigram on the mayor's secretary's desk, but nothing.

CP: Aside from Wordplay, what have you been working on lately?

JL: This year it's really been hard to keep my painting work going. I have a museum showing my paintings next month [in New Britain, Conn.], so I've been trying to get a few new paintings for that. There is a Da Vinci Code movie in the works, and what's developed is working on opening title credits.

CP: Are there common threads for each ambigram?

JL: Each one is a new challenge. I'm using the same symmetry over and over for similar things. If you've looked on the Web, there are a lot of people doing ambigrams, most of which are really shitty, because most people don't have the background in typography and design. For me, it has to be something that is easily readable, with aesthetic integrity to the word. If there is a lot of razzmatazz, it's because I feel like I have a lot of manipulations to hide or excuse.

CP: How do you start a new piece?

JL: When I get an e-mail from somebody, before I write back, I will spend about 5 minutes seeing if I can make this word work. With most words, I can tell what the odds are. It's a very experimental, playful experience. Most words will have that "oh gee, I've never tried that combination before, I wonder if I can make that work."

CP: Could you do City Paper?

JL: I'm trying to figure out if there's a structural solution. That's a pretty nasty one. I have trouble with an A and P combination. I already have a very pessimistic feeling about this. These [Y, P and A] are very tortured, twisted letters, while these three [C, I and T] are very straightforward, clean and geometrical. This is where, depending on what the project was, I would try to talk somebody out of it, or I would say this could be fabulous if I could do this, and throw away dozens of tests. Here, you can take this. Don't show it to anybody.

John Langdon will sign copies of Wordplay, Sat., Nov. 19, 1 p.m., Doylestown Bookshop, 16 S. Main St., Doylestown, 215-230-7610.