the Blue Book

Sample page from the Blue Book: Caslon

The Blue Ampersand Book is a guide to basic typography terminology, history, and use, illustrated through ampersands. The ampersand tends to be the character a type designer most enjoys crafting with creativity and flair.  Yet, every ampersand also encompasses the defining attributes of the font to which it belongs.

In the digital age, typography is more accessible than ever before in history, and it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the hundreds or thousands of fonts you have to choose from.  Hopefully this book will start to give you a sense that most fonts have a rich history and particular ways in which they’re meant to be used.

I chose ten fonts with particularly interesting or unique ampersands, and that covered a range of typographic history and styling.  Using a CNC (Computer Numerically Controlled) Plasma Cutter, I fabricated each ampersand out of metal – how satisfying to have a physical manifestation of forms that typically exist digitally or on paper!  The photos of the metal ampersands are meant to convey each font’s unique personality, a context in which the ampersand might feel at home.

Should your interest in typography be piqued, you will find there exists a vast and exciting galaxy of type history, type styles, and type design principles to be discovered far beyond the fundamentals covered here!

Sample page from the Blue Book: Helvetica