Ampersand

"The ampersand is a symbol evolved from the Latin et, meaning and. It is one of the oldest alphabetic abbreviations, and it has assumed over the centuries a wonderful variety of forms. The more creative versions are often more useful" - Robert Bringhurst "The Elements of Typographic Style".

I started being interested in this amazing typographic element since the last autumn semester. It was always a mystery for me to understand, how to draw it, so I always tried to avoid using it. Sometimes I even mistaken it with "vs" abbreviation, since I did not know the exact meaning. By trying to explain it to myself, I made a research and found out that quite a lof of people do not know how to use an ampersand correctly. For example, a lot of Russian companies use it with cyrillic texts/on logotypes by showing westernness, what looks unpleasant and too showy.

I decided to make an ampersand manual for one of the lessons given by Norman Orro and Mikk Heinsoo in Art Academy. My keywords were associations and a reasearch around one word. Quite a lot of images I used in the booklet are all the associations (found in different everyday life forms) I have with an ampersand.

This booklet is the first version, I am planning to make a second version, which will be more detailed and supplemented, as my bachelor work.