Today is National Ampersand Day! As a blogger, I have a deep appreciation & love for the ampersand. It is more than just a useful shorthand. It makes article titles look neater & it looks great in my Canva-made featured imaged. In fact, wouldn’t it be great if we scrapped the word ‘and’ altogether & just use “&” instead? I sure think so, & will pretend that ‘and’ does not exist on this special day.
About National Ampersand Day
Chaz DeSimone founded National Ampersand Day in 2015. His monthly design project, AmperArt, features “the ampersand as fun & fabulous art.” Chaz DeSimone is a pretty interesting human. He is passionate about design & relentless in pursuing excellence & refining detail, Chaz DeSimone does not subscribe to the statement “perfection does not exist.” It does, & he proves it.
“Scribbling “logos” since he was a child and adding serifs to letters since he could hold a crayon, Chaz has been a progressive thinker and creator in many areas of advertising and graphic design. He specializes in his very first loves: lettering, typography, layout, and above all, brand identity. That last category, of course, takes in all the elements of the first three.
Within the scope of brand identity (also called corporate identity or visual branding), Chaz creates the nucleus which is the logo, customizes the fonts for the identity program, and assembles palettes of color and visual elements to visually support the brand in every aspect: stationery, signage, collateral, and beyond…way beyond. Chaz stops at nothing to project the image that will serve his client.
He began to take a love to the design of the ampersand symbol, and began creating masterful pieces incorporating it. The ampersand, that curious & curvacious symbol that’s as much art as punctuation, is celebrated in a new & stylish poster series by Chaz DeSimone, called AmperArt. AmperArt™ is a series of posters featuring the ampersand & common phrases. Chaz creates each poster as a work of fine art within his field of professional graphic design.
He has created artistic AmperArt posters for just about any occasion, event, holiday or person – including one to pay tribute to the late Steve Jobs.”
Italian Living
Ampersand Facts
The ampersand (“&”) is a logogram. It represents the Latin conjunction et, meaning “and”. The ampersand’s symbol is not only a logogram, but also a ligature. It joins the old handwritten Latin letters e & t of the word et, so that the word is represented as a single glyph. Ampersands come in two primary styles: Carolingian style & Italic style.
The Italic style symbol is the older of the two, & its design offers a pretty good hint into the origins of the ampersand. But these are leftovers from a previous time; ‘et’ used to be significantly more popular in English than it is now. During the same period, the ampersand was used as the end of the alphabet. Ampersands aren’t usually used in formal writing anymore, at least not as a replacement for the word ‘and’. They are still fair game, however, in company names & casual shorthand expressions like ‘pb&j.’
Summary
The ampersand is a useful & pretty symbol, which is why it has inspired so many designers & artists. Today is a great day to overuse it & share your love for it far & wide. You can start by sharing this article with all your friends & creating your own ampersand design! Also, National Ampersand Day made me wonder why I don’t have ampersand earrings in my Etsy store… this needs to change!
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