Flexion developed out of design philosophy and ambigramatic artwork of John Langdon. Based on the contents in John’s book Wordplay, author Dan Brown hired John to create ambigrams for his forthcoming novel Angels & Demons. Mr. Brown was so impressed with his work he even named the main character Robert Langdon after John.

After the success of Angels & Demons, Dan Brown wrote The Da Vinci Code. When the movie adaptation of that book was in the works, Dan suggested that John create titles for the movie based on ambigrams. John contacted Hal Taylor to create a font based on the lettering treatment to be used for the credits at the end of the movie. Unfortunately, it was decided that the film was running long and the original title concept was scrapped. By this time, Hal was well into developing a full type family, including small caps, alternate characters, lining and ranging figures. John was impressed with the way the design was turning out and decided that it had enough merit to be released as Flexion.