Kevin passed along this really interesting project a classmate of his did for a masters thesis. It is about ampersands, of course.
One danger of using computer-based fonts exclusively is it moves us away from the strange little things that happen when we write by hand. It is important to preserve the changes that have occurred in our handwriting in recent times. 100 people were asked to draw the symbol they use most frequently to replace the word ‘and’ in writing. In these posters, the magnified and overlaid symbols show the similarity amongst the various handwritten ‘and’s. Men’s answers are blue; women’s answers are pink. The final outcome of this project was to create three new symbols for ‘and’ which currently do not exist in computer based fonts.
[...] The Ampersand Masters Thesis [...]
[...] Ampersand Masters Thesis Men’s answers are blue; women’s answers are pink. The final outcome of this project was to create three new symbols for ‘and’ which currently do not exist in computer based fonts. handwritten ampersand. boys and girls ampersand. [...]