THE NAME
PRO TIPS FOR COOL SHIT IN LIFE
Why "Ampersand"?
A long (but great) quote
Your Type
In a sea of typography, the ampersand always stands out – designers love ampersands (& designers are always right, ok). There's even this entire great article about it on Fast Company, check it out. Here's some reasons we love the ampersand:
01
It has a whole interesting history – dating back to 1st-century graffiti in Pompeii, with the Latin "et" stylized by the 8th century into a symbol.
02
The name "ampersand" comes from 19th century school kids slurring "and per se and" (read that article if you're interested). A word mashup works for a site that mashes up a whole bunch of random information.
03
"It’s always an opportunity for adventure. Even the most conservative typefaces can give sanctuary to a whimsical ampersand or two." – Typeface designer Jonathan Hoefler
04
"If there is any way to summarize the ampersand...: the beautiful & uncooperative dinosaur who lives on in your fonts. May the ampersand never go extinct, & never be fully tamed." – Design writer John Brownlee
05
LISTS. This & that; on & on; 1, 2, & 3. The ampersand implies a link between items that works perfectly for a site full of lists on lists.
Nope, still not done waxing poetic about a symbol. Here's a great description really summarizing the ampersand:
"In the history of our alphabet, the ampersand is a dinosaur. It should have gone extinct a long time ago, but has survived nonetheless. We use it so frequently that it’s easy to forget its origin as two letters entangled, spelling out a word in Latin. The written forms of Latin had scores of contractions & other marks for abbreviation. All of those marks died alongside the Latin language itself, except for the ampersand. (And much less prominently, the “Rx” symbol we now take to signify pharmaceuticals.)
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Visually, the ampersand is a loner. Thanks to its convoluted development, it has no relatives among any of the letters. And it has a strange brief to satisfy, operating on the same scale as letters but never being mistaken for one. So the type designer is left to wing it, right from the start. It’s tempting to think that the top bowl will find guidance in the figure eight, or that the diagonals can cribbed off the K or X. It never works out that way.
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Usually, letters help to form one another, by setting precedents & providing contexts. But the ampersand doesn’t receive any of that support. That makes it hard to draw, because so many different shapes might look plausible at first. But it also opens an unusually large window for experimentation & risk. It’s how the designer can put on a fireworks show in this one shape, especially in seriffed italics.
In the end, the ampersand is a beautiful & uncooperative creature, one we’re lucky to have inherited."
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– Typeface designer Tobias Frere-Jones
Okay, so we've established ampersands themselves are cool – and the reason for choosing to name our site "Ampersand." Typologies, personality types, & quizzes are fun, right? We've come up with 4 Amp Types – take a quiz to find yours & discover your own set of awesome ampersands.