WAD Happened September 8, 2022

Thursday, September 8, 2022, World Ampersand Day dawned for the first time in history. The date gained fame in 2015 when typographer and graphic designer Chaz DeSimone, founder and principal…

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Shoulders of Friends

  When we read, thoughts remote from the words on the page or screen often pop into our minds. In the unlikely moment of reading how Muscovites celebrated winter holidays…

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Flatten the Curve

Theater removes us from the warp and weft of reality and allows us to escape into other lives. Lighting, sets, and actors pull us from our theater seats through the…

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Ampersand Pretzels

Two things everyone loves are pretzels and ampersands. Bring the two together and you have a sold-out house.   September 19, 2019, pretzels, ampersands, and graphic designers merged in the…

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Hidden Depths

In December 2012, on Dribbble (with three “b”s), the online community where graphic designers, web designers, illustrators, and photographers showcase new work, I discovered an unusual ampersand. It appeared to…

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Notable Ampersand 001

Adobe Caslon Pro italic ampersand designed in 1990 by Carol Twombly for Adobe Systems Inc. English gunsmith and typeface designer William Caslon (1692–1766) created the eponymous Caslon letterforms. For her…

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The Ampersand Hotel, London

Introduction by Nancy Upper In her 17 June 2015 BBC article on art history, Victoria and Albert: How a royal love changed culture, Lucinda Hawksley explains that Queen Victoria (1819-1901)…

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Why We Care About Ampersands

By NANCY UPPER – March 25, 2018   Ampersands began in human nature. For ever since mortals devised the first alphabets, 3,000-1,000 BCE, men and women have shortened words to…

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