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Designers love the ampersand.
Typography can be harsh and utilitarian. The ampersand introduces some much-needed weirdness into the field. In the English-speaking world, words are made up of combinations of letters. Letters do not represent whole words. That is absurd.
The ampersand stands alone. It combines two potentially unrelated items and connects them. The ampersand itself is a combination of sorts. Designing an ampersand begins with the letters ‘e’ and ‘t’, forming the Latin word ‘et’, which means ‘and’. All ampersands are fundamentally just these letters crashing into one another.
The Romans invented the ampersand. The ampersand predates the invention of lower case and italic. The ampersand is stoic and ancient and therefore it can be used in a professional, classic, and timeless way. It is also curvy, whimsical, and light, which compels designers to create ever-growing collections of fancy ampersands. The Romans invented several other letter combinations which were written as overlapping characters, but none of them stuck like the ampersand.
In 2010, the Society of Typographic Aficionados gathered over 400 designers to create new original ampersands as a part of a design-led effort to raise money for the earthquake in Haiti. The collection of over 400 ampersands can be purchased for about $20. The ampersand is one of the few elements of type that can command attention.
Most type is dull. The ampersand is weird. It has no direct pair among the letters, so it is permitted to be wild and different. The letter ‘E’ and ‘F’, for example, must share many of the same exact characteristics within a typeface. The ampersand shares no elements with any other letter, and therefore stands alone.