Have you been to Ampersandland?
And get a copy of SIGNA Nº 2: Das Et-Zeichen (in German)!

The ampersand wiki entry has a link to an article on its progression by Max Caflisch.

Typophile Conor & David have made a great ampersand poster.

An older thread, same topic. And another one.

Not necessarily my favourite one, but I quite like Antiqua English’s ampersand as it says “tea is being served” with a perfect British butler’s accent:

You wanna have an ampersand while your client/employer/editor insists on a vulgar ‘+’? Go with best of both worlds and Trump Mediaeval!

… while Diavlo’s & is a nice idea, but I don’t think it really works. Looks more like an alien diacritic to me:

There's nothing wrong with the ampersand in Rotis, unless winding back the clock and de-atrophicizing atrophied letterforms by restoring them to their form of origin can be considered a crime. Probably because they look fancy, a lot of typographers evidently prefer the more familiar atrophied ampersand form to its ancestor ligature.

Ampersand started out as a ligature of E and t, and was progressively twisted, flowed, redesigned into what I term an "atrophied" letterform.

Verdana's ampersand takes the same route as Rotis': a cursive capital E wedded to a t spells "Et", ancient Latin for "and".

Most of the fonts I have made contain the much older ligature form. One unreleased work has a selection of four, two of them using a lower case e, one of which is caps-height. Yes, of course it's easier to draw than the other kind of ampersand. But it's much more honest and less time-mottled.

j a m e s

...what’s everyone’s favourite ampersand?

I don't really have a favourite ampersand.

I recently came across the ampersand in FF Olsen—w/o question, the ugliest example I’ve ever seen. Yuk!

Maybe you've just abreacting because you're seeing it for the first time? Olsen's ampersand is different, yes, but does that make it ugly?

Intolerance is an ugly thing too.

j a m e s

Don, terms like "intolerance" I reserve for discussions at typophile, principally because of all people involved with type, designers and typographers can least afford to be intolerant. If a client objected to the ampersand in question on the grounds they think it looks ugly, that's their prerogative. They are entitled to their opinion as they are paying for consultation. I would not challenge or object to such a view. Only a fool would tell the client they are intolerant.

This isn't a discussion with a client. This is typophile.

I don't mind as long as somebody else is paying.

j a m e s

I second Caslon Italic. My all time fave. I am not a fan of the "et"

Some more threads on the subject

http://www.typophile.com/node/3760

http://dev.typophile.com/node/16742

http://www.typophile.com/node/17015

http://www.typophile.com/node/18715

Do the various forms have names?

BTW, I've recently taken to using a wide-nib fountain pen, and the ampersands that feel most natural to draw are similar to Minion Italic's or Palatino Italic's.

—Joel

These are a few of my favorite ampersand things.

j a m e s

I'll second Monotype Corsiva -- I've used it a lot in very diverse places but it has never seemed out of place.

"what’s everyone’s favourite ampersand? Is it the most beautiful?"

Yes.

A crapshoot it can be for sure :) I once used the Fell pica italic unit on a huge billboard, with a picture on the left, ampersand in the middle, brand name on the right, equals sign, and the word "bliss" at the end. A kind of word and image puzzle. The client loved it, but when my boss saw it he flipped, "Are you fugging nuts? What's that  t h i n g  in the middle supposed to be? Don't ever do that again!"

Ah well, I got a good laugh out of it. Told them, "In this business the only available rules are those of the gunfighter." In the sense that ads are so often hit or miss affairs. You just can't predict how people will react.

j a m e s

Maybe not favorite ampersands, but at least I can take the blame for all of these.
Damn, I really need to diversify my styles.

Greta Text Italic

Agreed, that bend always looks odd.
My favourite is Dante Bold Italic

I really love a good wood type ampersand, here are a couple:

hi everyone,

a question occurred while designing a book.
in a small text like this, which use of the ampersand is correct?

A.
© 2003, Laurent Mignonneau &
Christa Sommerer

B.
© 2003, Laurent Mignonneau
& Christa Sommerer

thx for answering.

best,
marcus

http://ampersandampersand.tumblr.com/

Very tasteful card.

--

Diane, you used Affair on your wedding invitation?! :-)

--

One of my most favorite ampersands is the one in Triplex Italic.
It's an "E"+"t" without at all looking archaic.

hhp

The trouble with the ampersand in FF Olsen, in addition to the mere novelty, is that it juxtaposes a capital letter and a lowercase letter - and they have different weights. That can be legitimately questioned from an æsthetic point of view.

Creativity and originality aren't "bad", but if a typeface is in some aspects outré or self-indulgent, whether in the design of the ampersand, or the letter Q, or some other such matter, it's entirely reasonable to look for an alternative typeface that can fulfill the same role without distracting elements.

While the ampersand, unlike most other special characters, usually was designed specifically for each given typeface even in the days of foundry type, the technical limitation of always using a Bodoni-ish version of the sorts @, #, %, and * did at least have one thing to be said for it - problems in recognizing these less-common characters were avoided.

@frode frank:
Ƕ combines uppercase and lowercase as well.

OK, that's the Latin capital letter Hwair. It's a ligature (there's also a completely different Gothic letter of the same name). The lowercase form, ƕ, is called "hv".

Ah. I had to read the Wikipedia article very carefully to figure out what the ligature was for - it was to represent that different-looking Gothic letter in Latin transliteration.