ABCDEFridays

The Ampersand

For my blog post I chose to write about the typographical form of the ampersand. It is a form that for some reason I have always been intrigued by. How designers handle the ampersand is something that I am always interested to see.

Just for some general history on the ampersand. It is a ligature of the letters e and t from the latin word for and. The ampersands history began back to the first century C.E. when it was written in Old Roman cursive. Below you can see the evolution of the form. 

When carolingian minuscule came along in the 9th many ligatures that were being used were no longer used the ampersand however stuck around. The ampersand has since evolved and although it is no longer used in formal writing we still see it in formal names of businesses and movie titles.

Another reason I chose to write my blog post about ampersands is that I found a blog in which for everyday of the year a ampersand was posted from a different type face.

While the blog is no longer updating everyday due to the fact that the preset year is over I still really enjoyed looking through all the different examples of ampersands from different typefaces. I found it interesting that some still really maintained the clear forms of the e and the t while others abstracted this form. Here is the link to the blog http://ampersandampersand.tumblr.com/.