This post brought to you by the letters O, B, S, E, S, & S.

by Jillian Butler, Ampersandology

I watched Sherlock Holmes again recently, mostly because of all the bromances I covered in my previous post, the one between Holmes and Watson gets me right here. Also, it's a beautiful film: all gritty, grubby street corners that have nothing to do with the over-romanticized English lore of the past. The streets of London end up looking like a quasi-Gothic, industrialized playground that Robert Downey Jr. barrels through with fists flying and gentlemen cuffs rolled up to his elbows.

But I just have to say one thing. As much as I appreciate the flashy, period-inspired use of typography in the film's post-production design, the title card does bother some:

Mostly because this typeface should be backwards. Relief printing means that everything you set is the mirror image of what comes out. The cast metal type looks like the opposite of what's printed. Like this!

See? So if you were going for authenticity, epic fail. So nice try, production designer, but if you were trying to show off how nerdy you are, I'm afraid it's back to the ol' drawing board. We'll laugh about this later, I promise!

I won't say that this visibly distracted during the film's press campaign, but only because admitting that because that would be crazy and esoteric.

The end credits, because they are beauty (note: also featured on the Art of the Title Sequence -- a frequent haunt and excellent read-- which reveals the original concept of this title sequence ran like a delusional gambit with the printing press motif):

*

This post was brought to you by the lagging printing and packaging process of a proposal grant, and the fact that I give these things too much thought. Buy American! 

HBO Title Cards FTW.

by Jillian Leigh, Ampersandology


The jury's still out on the show itself, but the opening for the new HBO offering How to Make It in America is a solid addition to their enviable roster of title sequences so far. Plus, NYC! That's my boy. That's your real face.



As much as I love their minimalistic, FUTURA EXTRA BOLD efforts, they created a monster. Everyone and their dog is aping this ultra-stylized, high-stakes opening montage with mouth-wateringly skillful typography---which is great, actually. I don't know what I'm complaining about. "Oooh, I'm having such a bad day. My wallet's too small for my 20's and my diamond shoes are too tight."

I always bank on a quality opening sequence -- it's like beautiful gilded wrapping paper. Even if the gift is rubbish, the anticipation was almost pristine...!

For your consideration, some other memorable HBO openers ---but be warned, I love these credits. Their imagery is like a short story that precedes a novel.

Deadwood


True Blood


Band of Brothers


And of course, Six Feet Under, the one that arguably started it all.


Got any other favourites? Television's lousy with 'em these days. 

Neutraface.

by Jillian Leigh, Ampersandology





Good news, amazing people in this video: any one of you now have permission to court me. I'm not saying you're going to get anywhere, but the permission is really half the battle. Some people wait years for my half-hearted, "Okay, fine then. Just don't embarrass me." True story. 


Oh, who am I kidding. You all have beards and are wearing anachronistic neckties. You couldn't be more my type if you started quoting Henry Miller while discussing how Stanley Kubrick is both overrated and unsung. 

Oh, fate is a fickle mistress.

by Jillian Leigh, Ampersandology

For about five minutes, I thought this was real.

I was already opening Amazon.ca to buy it. Then with a little research I discovered it was actually a print by Angel A. Acevedo.

After depleting the deepest reservoirs of my sorrow, I am left with only one alternative.

I hereby vow that I will WRITE THIS BOOK MYSELF.

Kinetic Typography: A Crash Course

by Jillian Leigh, Ampersandology


Kinetic typography is something of a pet hobby of mine. I'm currently trying to figure out Adobe AfterEffects in an effort to produce my own, but she's an unwilling coquette at the best of times (which, much like life, only makes me want her more. AfterEffects, you shameless minx). Kinetic typography is defined as: 




1 : the art and technique of expression with animated text. 
2 : breathing life into all I hold dear : art 


Kinetic typography is all over the place, but we rarely notice it--it's in movie trailers, credit sequences, commericals, and, most importantly, ON YOUTUBE. The day I discovered this truly fascinating art was a day the kinetic typography consumed like a magnificent, extremely localized fire. It meets my criteria for being cluctch art by observing: 


1) the glory of esoteric appeal. 
2) the need to master an obscure and mostly useless set of skills
3) the widely inapplicable nature to 95% of my day.


Ooh, but baby, the 5% it does apply to? We live it up like kings, baby. Like kings on vacation.


For funsies, I gathered up my favourite examples.  A lot of these are examples done in design school, which of course inspired me for a good thirty two seconds to get myself enrolled in design school, and but quick. Thirty two seconds, y'all. That's a long time for a whim to last. It almost convinced me. Honestly, I spell out dialogue in my head anyway, so this brings with it a soothing logic for me. 


Fight Club: Chemical Burn



There Will Be Blood: Drainage



Dexter: Tonight's the Night



Pulp Fiction: They Speak English in What?



Chapter 7: Chuck Palahniuk's Choke



Ad for AMC - Full Metal Jacket



I Love NY



Vancouver Film School: A Lesson in Typography (because how could I not?)





Go dive into the glorious depths of YouTube: can you find something more clutch? 

If there really is a cult of letters, I want to be treasurer.

by Jillian Leigh, Ampersandology


The first time I saw the poster for the Spike Jonze/Dave Eggers collaboration on my childhood, it haunted me. 

Not because I was excited for the film. I mean, I AM (I've already read the weird pseudo short story that Eggers published in The New Yorker AND internalized the trailer). But what really poked at my cerebellum every time I saw this poster was something far more disturbing: what was that FONT? And where had I seen it before? 


A little cursory investigation told me that the font is handdrawn (and also gave me a new hero!) and in any case resembled Mrs. Strange, on the offchance I someday want to recreate without getting a degree in being awesome and good at handdrawn fonts (I hear the application process is ridiculous). The above article is FULL of this delightful insider knowledge, SUCH AS!: 

At Mojo, we recently worked on a custom typeface for the Warner Bros. movie Where The Wild Things Are. It was meant to look like the writing of the lead child actor, and the studio responded very positively to the lettering of Erik Buckham, one of our art directors. So he drew up a bunch of the characters, I digitized them, and built it all in FontLab.

Oh, the effort glows from the result: I am warmed with memories of my own big-print salad days, and must admire the discrete perfection in such hand-lettering. Solution in hand, still, I was not satisfied. DAMN MY INSATIABLE CURIOSITY. You see, I still couldn't remember what it intitally reminded me of, a mystery that warranted mentioning every time I visited the movie theater (without fail, my dear boyfriend would probably add). Then, it dawned on me. 


It was in front of my face the whole time, mocking me from my movie shelf, like the callow, cold-hearted companion it is: 

Kubrick, you've won yet another round in our lifelong battle of wits. MYSTERY = SOLVED. Cred = salvaged. Now, back to not obsessing about random fonts ahem, lunch. 

Work Hard and Be Nice to People

by Jillian Leigh, Ampersandology

This is a letterpress print by Anthony Burrill; I have wanted it for a very long time. Isn't it marvelous? It's already in its third printing. Just look at that simplicity, and admire the almost rustic lines of the wood block print process--no two would be the same. There is a vitality to this print, mark my overly-attached words.

No matter how trendy it seems to be in typography these days (and yes, I just used the words "trendy" and "typography" in the same sentence), I just never tire of the powerful simplicity in big words in a white space. The Keep Calm Gallery's print collection more or less fulfils this hole in my day.

"Work Hard and Be Nice to People."

"Do What You Love and Love What You Do."

"Freedom is in Peril."

I could live by these words. In fact, I more or less do live by them. I'm pretty sure you could convince me to do anything if you churned that sans-serif suggestion out of a letterpress on some satisfyingly thick paper.

But I just... I can't justify dropping what will probably come to a cool Benjamin on the Burril print when I already have spent enough money this year on typographic art. I mean, I CAN justify it, but let me tell you, it is NOT convincing. No matter how worthy I think the cause is, somehow the government doesn't agree with me that typography should be a tax break. Go figure! It's a war fought in vain, my friends.

I've already brought this beauty home this year. It came all the way from foggy Londontown! Many reproductions have cropped up in the past year, and this 1939 British propaganda posters have become almost trendy. But I wouldn't drop my change on any old reproduction...no my beauty is straight from the source, beautifully hand printed on Rives heavyweight paper (mouldemade in France!) with deckle edges. You can smell the peril, I swear to God.

...This is why Stuff White People Like has me on speed dial, isn't it? I do this to myself.

Postscript: I might make an exception for this mouth-watering Douglas Wilson print. IT IS PRACTICALLY FREE.

In this corner...

Helvetica vs. Arial. Death match.

Let's weigh in the contenders, shall we?

Helvetica:

Was developed in 1950s in Switzerland by Haas Foundry.

Is awesome.

Has become the deserved standard for modern, minimalist design.

Had an amazing documentary about it that I certainly did NOT tape off TV at great personal frustration. HA. HA HA. (twice)

Arial:

Is a flimsy knockoff made for cheap-ass Microsoft.

Only became the popular font it is today because it's bundled into every Microsoft product.

Generally sucks. Also, I hear it kicks puppies for fun. And controls the weather.

Let justice be done. Beat up Arial; long live Helvetica.

Damn, it feels good to be a gangster.

So I’ve seen Public Enemies. And, as usual, I have a mixed reaction.

I’ve done considerable study of the gangster genre, so I went into Public Enemies involuntarily prepared. Seriously, I’m starting to rue the fact that I can trace the cultural lineage of basically any movie, because it’s become near impossible to chase that “aw shucks, the pictures are telling a story!” feeling I used to get as a kid.

The mishmash of film history in my head makes a weirdly nostalgic but fussy result. Knowing the long and varied path of the gangster films that came before it, I can’t help but compare. And while Public Enemies is undoubtedly stunning, well-acted and technically sound, something is just not right.

Now for the preamble: during the late 20s and early 30s, the real heyday of gangster movies, Hollywood was trying to salvage a reputation ravaged by sex scandals and tales of debauchery. It was a seedy place to be, not helped by the relative freedom these actors found under a media widely controlled by the studio. Scandals emerged to seriously dint the glamour of Hollywood, among them Fatty Arbuckle’s trial for the assault and murder of Virginia Rappe, ‘It’ girl Clara Bow’s reputation (the stuff of urban legends), and a string of widely publicized and sordid murders.

It led to an over-vigorous clean-up of Tinseltown, as studios began to build morality clauses into their contracts and the Hays Production Code was written up in 1930. The Code (a hilarious, but worthwhile read) stipulated clearly, among other things, that bad characters came to bad ends, and that crime never went unpunished.

After the Great Depression, the gangster pictures that had been second-feature fodder suddenly became wish-fulfillment for beleaguered audiences eager to see tough Americans who wouldn’t take squat from a corrupt system. These films were anthems to those disenfranchised by the failure of a shortsighted economy. Sure, gangsters were baddies, killing and stealing without remorse, but they didn’t starve, did they?

The dilemma was this: the public loved gangsters. But the Code forbade such characters from being heroes. So how could they be represented as protagonists, when really, they were the antagonists?

Why do I bring all this up? Well, because it’s a trope that still applies today. ‘Gangster movie’ isn’t the catch-all phrase it used to be (compare the ‘fire bad, tree good’ morality of 1931’s The Public Enemy to the nuanced duplicity in 2007’s The Departed) but the same confusion applies: are we supposed to cheer for the guys breaking the law? Or learn how wrong they are?

(The solution after the public soured on gangster stories in the 1940s was more cut and dry: the archetype was turned into a heroic but tough-minded “G-man”—government agents who were basically gangsters in everything but name and pay scale)

Public Enemies, at the end of the day, suffers more than it benefits from this ambiguity. John Dillinger (Johnny Depp, obviously) spends half the movie as a hardened, impressively nuance-free bank robber, apparently in it for the money and the flexible work hours. There’s zero sense of consequence: he’s no more than annoyed at the short spans between bank jobs spent in jail. There are hints of something deeper that drives him forward-- deep-set loyalty, a hero complex towards the working class, and a belief in his own true blue nature— but it’s not on the screen: it’s in the characters’ mouths. If I wasn’t told that Dillinger considered himself someone who never let his friends down, I’m not sure I would have come up with it on my own.

Christian Bale’s Melvin Purvis, on the flip side, is given a strong, if monumentally dull, character from the word go. He’s on firm moral ground: at one point, on the phone with the hilariously accurate J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup), Purvis says plainly that if Hoover won’t scrap this idea of a ‘modern police force’ and send in agents who actually know what they’re doing, he’s resigning. That’s it, full stop. Personal ambition and devotion to the Bureau be damned: Purvis won’t watch good men die for an ideal.

It’s a stark contrast to Dillinger and his gang. They die in blazes of gun fire, in corn fields and on city sidewalks. In a way, they’re all dying for the same staunch ideal, albeit one they probably wouldn’t recognize: they want to live outside of a normal social structure, chomping at the hand that forgot to feed them. Heck, if that means taking a few slugs and living in fear, maybe it’s a fair trade-off.

I mean, don’t get me wrong. The fact that Bale’s character was in the right didn’t make him a more entertaining, or even more interesting character (for one thing, Depp gets the better lines). But if director Michael Mann set out to create a sense of history filled with moral complexity, he fell short. When one side of your argument is traditionally identified as right (Purvis as moral law enforcer) and the other as wrong (Dillinger as unrepentant breaker of laws), you’ve got to have some pretty solid footing as to why we’re cheering for one and not the other. The fact that Johnny Depp is 1/8^th dreamier than Christian Bale does not a strong case make.

So I’ll repeat: when did moral complexity become rooting for the bad guys just to skew convention? Don’t get me wrong, I’ll cheer for anyone. All I ask for is a reason.

[TYPOGRAPHY SIDERANT! All this doesn’t assuage my confusion about why the title cards appear in a highly stylized Soviet propaganda font—is there some deeper, oppression metaphor going on, or did it just look vaguely correct? Because I think I understand what they’re going for—they’re just two decades too early. But the effect is jarring.]

The Film Before the Film: Title Sequences For the Win

It was 1955. Otto Preminger was releasing a controversial new movie--The Man With the Golden Arm--about a heroin-addicted Frank Sinatra, a virtual taboo. But that may not have been the film's only contribution to film history. There was also the movie reels that arrived at theatres across the country, with a note attached: "Projectionists- pull curtain before credits."

It had been industry practice to leave the curtains closed--these sequences had long been considered a dull litany of cast and credits that projectionists waited until they had ended to reveal the screen. But Preminger considered this title sequence to be an integral part of the film, and he thought so for one reason: Saul Bass.

He's now the go-to name to study when it comes to title sequence, which in his 40 year career he elevated to an art form. Bass' work would come to revolutionize the way audiences and movie-makers alike . But back then, he was just a poster designer.

When I sat down to start writing this post about title sequences, his work is the first and last that came to mind. Without his conceptual credits for movies like North by Northwest, Psycho or Anatomy of a Murder, we probably wouldn't have most of the titles on this list.

Bass created a new rule: that a good title sequence should not only reflect the movie that was to follow, but enhance it. He believed a good title sequence could do a lot of the film's work for it, acting like a first scene of sorts to set the mood. Bass' infamous titles for The Man With the Golden Arm was created to enhance the story, not merely preface it. He was a huge supporter of kinetic typography (a pet fascination of mine) and became known for his stark, ultra-hip imagery (it's no mistake that at least two entries on this list practically directly reference him in their conception).

Given that Saul Bass was a pioneer in title sequences (some of which are better than the movie that follows) it seems very fitting to start with his resume. So first up is the one that started it all: The Man With the Golden Arm. He chose to match the film's theme thematically, making the arm the central image of the screen.

Unfortunately, my absolute favourite Bass sequence isn't available anywhere--1962's Walk on the Wild Side, starring Laurence Harvey, Jane Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck. If you ever get a chance, tune it--then tune out, because the film that follows isn't what I'd call stellar.

So instead I chose Vertigo, one of the more brilliant sequences I think Bass created. The focus on the woman's parts, instead of her whole face, heartbreakingly reflects what's coming: a man driven by a specialized obsession to superficially re-create the woman he lost. Plus--that music!! So morbidly romantic. Bass would work with lots of directors (such as Preminger, Kubrick and Scorcese) but perhaps no alliance was as famous as his one with Alfred Hitchcock (see also: North by Northwest and Psycho). What do you learn by watching these credits? That there's some creepy-ass stuff on the horizon, and you should already feel like the voyeur Hitchcock thinks you are.

Se7en (1995)

At the other end of the title sequence spectrum, there's David Fincher's Se7en, the story of the investigation of an unusual string of murders in a dirty, decrepit city. It tells us much of what the film's main characters (Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman) will spend the plot line investigating, giving us an insight into John Doe that we didn't ask for and were too unprepared to absorb. But it puts in the film's mood and unnerves us, presenting a scene of decay, overexposure and The fact that it's perfectly set to an uncredited version of Nine Inch Nails' Closer in no way hurts its case. Many imitations would follow (see any horror film made in the 2000s) but none would come close.

Designer: Kyle Cooper.

Catch Me If You Can (2002)

Perhaps a controversial opinion, but damned if I don't think of this as one of Spielberg's most successful films. It isn't his most important, or his most personal. But it's probably his most entertaining, and a film, I can watch over and over. In Catch Me If You Can, I feel like he achieved a certain peace: he manages to marry the light incredulity of its protagonist's cons with the underbelly of a genuinely tragic portrayal of an American nuclear family in ruins, and make clear without ever being obvious what drives the film-long game of cat (Tom Hanks) and mouse (Leonardo DiCaprio). And it starts off right: these breezy, genuinely cool title sequence create their own mythology, while borrowing heavily from the Bass empire of cut-out images against starkly colored backgrounds.

Lolita (1962)

Only Kubrick, that magnificent bastard, could take something as harmless as a pedicure and make our minds go to the darkest places. But then again, he's also helped by the fact that we, as spectators, make it suggestive; I'd bet that most people who sit down to watch Lolita has a good guess of what's coming. That's probably something that Kubrick, in his infinite wisdom, banked on; as much as he seems to ignore the audience, he was always a director that was particularly attuned to the reaction his choices would evoke.

But even in this seemingly docile scene, there are strains of the themes to come: just as the camera seems to have a strange fixation on this action, you can't help but think of Humbert Humbert, the film's closest candidate for 'protagonist,' and his obsession with his Lo. It makes you uncomfortable for no justifiable reason, which is the least he could do considering how watered down the plot line that follows.

Bullitt (1968)

What does the title sequence of Bullitt promise you? That it's going to be awesome, it's going to be cool, and it's going to be Steve McQueen being awesome and cool. And that, my friends, is the very definition of all you need to know. I particularly the push-through typography, the absence of traditional studio emblems, and that hot jazz sound.

(Skip through to the :52 to avoid the poster's preamble--this was the only one I could find).

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

Another huge debt to Saul Bass, though this ends up looking like a Bass title sequence that was run through a city drainpipe and stepped on by countless pedestrians. However, when I saw these credits for the first time? I actually got excited. What can I say? I lost it at the movies.*

*Not that it. Perverts.

The Fall (2008)

If you consider the rest of this entry the main course, then this is the dessert. I love everything about this 2 and a half minutes, and watch it often: it's inexplicable yet makes perfect sense; it's confusing but also reaffirming. The story this sequence tells has the air of a living Dorthea Lange photo, with the aching procession of images hauling us into that final frame, when we appear to get an answer to all this action--but do we really at all?

The arrangement of the images--cold, colorless, frenetic, without a clear time or place--with the typography--clean, stark and modern--evokes a setting that seems old-fashioned but somehow completely relevant. Does the story continue on beyond this? Well, yes, but you almost don't need it. A beautiful and worthy prelude to an unusually lovely film.

I haven't said anything of note about the film itself, but that speaks of the power of these minutes. It's its own film, one that is richly informed by seeing the feature that follows, but isn't necessary. Its layers are built from within.

EDITOR'S NOTE: I also desparately wanted to include the title sequence for The Royal Tenenbaums, given that the first three seconds immediately takes me back to my girlhood, when I first learned that admitting you're strange is a time-saver. So I found it, and now I'm outsourcing you.

For further reading:

The Art of the Title Sequence

Forget the Film; Watch the Titles

My TYPE of Bag...HAHA Hello Witsville.

Uh, hi. So this is basically the most perfect thing ever: a leather bag NOT ONLY embossed with the Didot typeface BUT IS ADDITIONALLY big enough to carry books, magazines and a complete change of clothes (more or less my only requirements for a bag). 

It's only $450. By 'only,' of course, you understand that my scale of comparison includes a major home renovation or a Presidential Inauguration. Then, $450 sounds like a discount. A relief even! 

The Theme from A Summer Place is playing non-stop in my head. DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS? IT MEANS TRUE(ish) LOVE. 

Quite frankly, I have never known a fever so single-minded, so blindingly bright. This purse combines my three greatest loves: typography, fashion AND spending money like a drunken sailor on leave! It must be mine. 

Everyone, we're starting a letter-writing campaign. To get me this purse. No matter the cost.*

*Excluding, of course, any actual cost. 

Here's to being really, really, ridiculously good-looking.

The greatest landing page in the history of landing pages: Designer Slash Model. 

HAHAHAHAHA! I can't orient myself or try to understand its purpose because I am too busy finding it hilarious! Just when you think it has probably gotten less funny, you find yourself mistaken! Too cool for school hipster designers FINALLY admitting to the world that (quote) "you must be beautiful to make beautiful things"? My life has been a dream until this moment; to wit, I just WOKE UP.  I want that t-shirt. I want all the t-shirts. 

I just...I can't speak, because of the wretched desire that has overcome my soul. WHY AM I NOT ALREADY A DESIGNER SLASH MODEL? The absence of the slash from my decorative job title leaves me cold, bereft and shivering in the orphaned night. New life's ambition: to become a Designer//Slash//Model, and prove more ultra-mod than any of these mondo-yawn amateurs could ever be. 

In other news, Happy belated World Graphic Design Day, everyone! A day that graphic designers everywhere hope will promote "greater understanding between people and can help to build bridges where divides and inequities exist." Also, that normal people everywhere will wake up wanting to wear skinny jeans and a distressed faux-vintage rock tee to work, where they will argue about point size for headings all day. Because why not, you know? 

In conclusion: Pretty pictures are like a band-aid for the soul. 

A Landmark Alphabet

It's bizarre global quirks like these that tell me this world can be an alright place that, from all discerable evidence, probably approves of my life choices. 

Behold, The Accidental Typography of Google Maps.

The Future Language of Slaves

This link is from the blog of Alexander Charchar. He’s a designer/philosopher of sorts, and I follow his blog in part because I’ve always been fascinated with the thought process behind design (mostly minimalist--Jan Tschichold is a household name around these parts, but more on that later). But most importantly, this guy knows his stuff.

Take his most recent post. He set out to redesign the cover of George Orwell’s 1984—not to boost sales or max out on sleek, modern design, but to try and embody the deepest themes and message of the book. In other words, exploring the concept of a book and hopefully, communicating this abstraction on a level that you don’t see in conventional book design.

This isn’t something that’s even remotely commercially viable, but the idea fills my head with marshmallows and pixie dust. I just love creations of this nature—it reminds me that in any creative venture, you’re breathing in the dust from ideas that came before you. Art begats art, and etc.  Just the inkling of it fills my head with ideas--a copy of Wuthering Heights that comes as three or four separate diaries, scratched letters, and photographs. On the Road bound as one long, connected roll of a manuscript (complete with food smears and coffee halos). 

Of course, I like to think that one of the artists’ greatest tools—whether they’re painters, writers or filmmakers—is a healthy supply of tracing paper. As Picasso said (which I repeat too often):

“Good artists borrow. Great artists steal.” 

Read on: Reimagining Nineteen Eighty-Four [retinart]. 

And now, a word from our sponsor…

A look at my own little love knot, the ampersand.

Scottish writing, 9th century

In the most delicious turn of events, the modern ampersand is the product of many centuries of evolution—in other words, an unholy corruption of its hard-working ancestors. Derived from the Latin and ,‘et’, the letters began their life as separate lovers. They lived in different parts of town, kept their own place, had their separate hobbies. It was great. But over time, they got closer and closer until, in the immortal words of the Spice Girls, two became one.

Around the ninth century, as scribes got a little quicker and hence lazier, the word had evolved into a tightly formed ligature that comes closer to what we know today. As far as I know, the name itself (“ampersand”) is the bastard child of the Latin “and per se and,” which has a weird Latin reason for repeating itself.

Unfortunately, with the rise of slab serif and sans serif typefaces in the 19th century, the roman version of the ampersand (the basic model: &) got invited to all the typefounding parties, in both italic as well as roman style. It was a harsh scene. I HATE YOU, SANS SERIF! (I'm kidding! I love you! But for very different reasons.) Thankfully, all the old guard kept it together, and you don’t need to look farther than Jenson, Garamond, Baskerville, et all to see some truly beautiful examples of ampersands done correctly.

That’s because for typographers, the ampersand has always been the playground of typefaces: you can let loose and channel your inner Prince, allowing for the most artistic of expression. I’m not going to lie, the italics of many modern typefaces are like poetry read by a lecherous but well-meaning Frenchman, drunk on his own lovemaking skills:

Actual usage of the ampersand varies across languages. English and French condone the use of the ampersand as a substitute for and, but I think it’s reached the point when it’s most generally accepted either in design or as the in-text bridge between a pair (eg. Gilbert & Sullivan). The Germans only condone it in formal and corporate titles--it is VERBOTEN in running text. 

*

You might say I spend too much time looking this stuff up; my counter would be a triumphant chuckle as I insisted I already knew it, hence required no research. Then, as I realized the implications of my rebuttal, my victorious smile would darken, and my head would droop ever so slightly, and I would finally put a name to the feeling that haunted my days: it is shame. Never has a victory felt so like a defeat. 

Thanks Adobe, for indulging my geekiest sounds.