We’ve always been a fan of ligatures here at Depikt. Just to make sure we are all on the same page, a ligature is a glyph that combines the shapes of certain sequences of characters into a new form that makes for a more harmonious reading experience. A common example is the “fi” ligature, which combines a lowercase “f” and a lowercase “i” into a single glyph so that the shoulder of the f doesn’t clash with the dot of the i. Recently we had a real a-ha moment when we realized that another one of our favorite typographical characters, the ampersand, is actually (drumroll please) a ligature!!! The ampersand’s origin is the Latin conjunction “et,” which means “and.” This symbol (&) is a ligature of the lowercase letters “e” and “t.” This ligature (also called an aesthetic logogram) is called “short and,” and it was designed as a mixture of an “e” and a “t.” #mindblown