i'm a bit of a self confessed type geek so i apologise in advance if you really don't give a hoot about type and fonts in general. you should really care though!!! if more people cared we wouldn't be surrounded by ridiculously overused (not to mention wrongly used!) fonts like Comic Sans, Curlz, Lucida Handwriting and... Papyrus (shudder)
anyway i digress, here's my Ampersand...
it's a messy rainbow version of a Caslon Ampersand (my personal favourite) created by British type designer William Caslon in the 1720's
so why this one and not another i hear you cry, well it's quite simple. i adore this kind of Ampersand purely for it's decorative loops and swirls
+ the fact that unlike most modern '&'s this one looks like the word it was originally scribbled to replace (credited to a shorthand writing method proposed in 63BC)
you see, the ampersand is actually two letters combined. The E and T of the Latin 'et' literally meaning 'and', hence it's lasting use as a somewhat flourished abbreviation for that little joining word.
if you look at the lovely Caslon ampersand you can easily make out the E and the T.
And that's why i like it + believe it or not, it's much easier to draw than one like this &.
end of typographical rambling.
so until tomorrow, that's all folks... xX
