Visual identity and type design for Ampersand Publishing

THE PROJECT

Behind the distinction.

Ampersand is an independent publishing house founded in Buenos Aires in 2012, dedicated to books on writing, culture, and fashion. In 2025, they invited our studio to rethink their visual identity, which they felt had become disordered and not strong enough. At the same time, they were determined not to compromise their reputation or the recognition they had built over the years. They needed to remain who they were — only more visible, less solemn, and more powerful.

The rebranding focused on redefining their core identity elements. We redrew the logotype and symbol to improve formal quality, consistency, and functional performance, and we established a clear system for layout, imagery, and color usage. A key proposal emerged early in the process: the design of a custom typeface. For a publishing house devoted to writing, creating their own letterform system was not only coherent but deeply meaningful, allowing the identity to express their voice in a direct, typographic way.

To develop this typeface we designed a display font family with enough distinctiveness to sustain institutional recognition. Its core inspiration came from Ampersand’s own emblem — a singular ampersand with voluptuous curves and sharp cuts. The resulting Roman and Italic styles each include more than 670 glyphs and support 38 languages, an essential feature for a publishing house of this scope. Conceived not for long immersive reading but for headlines and highlighted text, the typeface displays unexpected, sometimes audacious gestures that reinforce both uniqueness and character.