Me & me & me.

Chaz DeSimone served on a platter

Hel­lo.

I’m Chaz DeS­i­mone & it’s a plea­sure meet­ing you. But why are you sit­ting sideways?

If you were expect­ing to read about Nation­al Amper­sand Day, you’ll have to go here. Being the ego­man­ic that I am, this page is all about me & me & me.

Good enough isn’t

I don’t recall which major brand used that slo­gan sev­er­al decades ago, but I love it and live by it. Pas­sion­ate about design & excel­lence, I do not not sub­scribe to the state­ment “per­fec­tion does not exist.” It does. Great design­ers prove it all the time.

Scrib­bling “logos” since I was a tantrum-​throwing tod­dler & adding ser­ifs to let­ters since I could hold a Cray­ola* I’ve been for­tu­nate to enjoy a career of cre­ativ­i­ty. I’ve always been a pro­gres­sive thinker (in grade school I was con­sid­ered retard­ed), which led to pio­neer­ing styles & con­cepts in many areas of adver­tis­ing & graph­ic design. My first loves will always be let­ter­ing, typog­ra­phy, lay­out & logos. I get deliri­ous­ly side­ways hap­py when a client asks me to design a logo with an amper­sand in it.

How AmperArt got started

In 2011, as a mar­ket­ing cam­paign for my graph­ic design busi­ness, I cre­at­ed a series of “amper­sand art” posters. After pos­i­tive feed­back, I turned it into an ongo­ing series & named it Amper­Art, plan­ning to release one piece per month as long as I can push a pen­cil & a pix­el. So far I’ve cre­at­ed near­ly 200. Those first sev­er­al cam­paign pieces & all the oth­ers are in the Amper­Art gallery.

My “real” work

I design brand iden­ti­ty, from a sin­gu­lar logo to a com­pre­hen­sive brand­ing sys­tem; book cov­er art & inte­ri­or typog­ra­phy; posters, collateral,+99999999999999****- (the cat did that), pack­ag­ing, web design & all that sort of stuff.

With­in the scope of brand iden­ti­ty (also called cor­po­rate iden­ti­ty or visu­al brand­ing — what­ev­er it’s called, that and expert typog­ra­phy are my favorite design prac­tices), I cre­ate the nucle­us which is the logo, cus­tomize the fonts for the iden­ti­ty pro­gram & assem­ble palettes of col­or & visu­al ele­ments to visu­al­ly sup­port the brand in every aspect: sta­tionery, sig­nage, col­lat­er­al, web­site & beyond…way beyond. I stop at noth­ing to refine an image that will best serve my client.

You may admire — I mean inspect — my work at des​i​monedesign​.com.

 

More about me & me & me

On the per­son­al side, I paint vibrant abstracts, cre­ate cus­tom greet­ing cards (fea­tur­ing the amper­sand of course), lis­ten to straight-​ahead jazz, attempt to dance swing & ball­room & prac­ti­cal­ly live at Dis­ney­land. Unless it’s hot & sun­ny — then I’m at the beach with a tow­el & cool jazz & noth­ing else. After all, as my favorite bumper stick­er goes, “If we were meant to go naked we would have been born that way.”

*My favorite Crayola has always been blue-​green, but I’ll admit I can’t draw much more than a stick figure.

Okay, enough about me. Let’s hear about you & you & you. Leave a com­ment below, or con­tact me direct. Or go ahead and read why I cre­at­ed Nation­al Amper­sand Day.

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15 responses to “Me & me & me.”

  1. Trixy King Rex Avatar
    Trixy King Rex

    Thank you Chaz for allow­ing us to freely use your logo art­work (with acknowl­edge­ment). I have a face­book page that posts about dai­ly hol­i­days and fun triv­ia facts, thru pups. So tomor­row we will cel­e­brate “Amper­sand Day” and our friends (furiends to us), will love it. I am quite sure they do not know what an amper­sand is any­way, fun knowl­edge for all. Thank yoooooooooo (as a pup would say).

    Reply
  2. Ensis Avatar
    Ensis

    Hey, popped in after talk­ing with you on Susie’s blog! Love the amper­sands! And my last Net­flix was RENT… Yeah, try­ing not to be ashamed.
    I’m wondering-​​what are your thoughts on etpersands?

    Reply
    1. Chaz DeSimone Avatar
      Chaz DeS­i­mone

      I just saw your com­ment now…thanks for vis­it­ing. (You did sub­scribe, did­n’t you?)
      Hmmm…etpersands? That would have been spo­ken “et per se and” — I assume you know that over time, “and per se and” mean­ing “and this sym­bol, by itself, means ‘and’ ” was slurred togeth­er into the word we use today: amper­sand. (When a word comes about from a mis­tak­en pro­nun­ci­a­tion, it’s called a mon­de­green.) So your mon­de­green is a com­bi­na­tion of Latin and Angli­cized spelling. Let’s make it all Latin just for an exper­i­ment: “et per se et” of which the mon­de­green would be “etper­set.” Quite inter­est­ing, and I like it. It’s actu­al­ly more accu­rate, being all in the same lan­guage. I’m going to work that clever idea into one of my arti­cles, send­ing peo­ple your way, of course.
      I’m not going to change the name Amper­Art to Etper­Art, though – or, as it would appear in Latin, EtperArs. 

      I’ve always want­ed to see RENT — thanks for the reminder. (I watch a lot of old movies on YouTube, espe­cial­ly from the 30s & 40s.)

      Reply
  3. Susan S. Avatar
    Susan S.

    Popped in from Susie’s par­ty. A plea­sure to dis­cov­er your site. I envy your tal­ent. One of my hob­bies is mak­ing soap and sell­ing at lit­tle local craft shows. With­out ques­tion, the most time con­sum­ing and brain con­sum­ing part of my micro biz is the pack­ag­ing, logo, over­all pre­sen­ta­tion. When the whole thing start­ed, once I had the name, I need­ed a logo, some­thing that peo­ple would see and imme­di­ate­ly know it was me. And with the vari­ety of soap scents, I use a stan­dard label but vary the col­or that encir­cles my logo pho­to. And it took days to fig­ure out the per­fect font, then the size, and the lay­out. Exquis­ite agony!!

    Reply
  4. Pati Avatar
    Pati

    Wow! Chaz I real­ly like this one, you do amaz­ing work but this one touched my heart. I will share Amper­art with my con­tacts, keep up the good work.

    Pati

    Reply
  5. Michael Broadway Avatar
    Michael Broad­way

    What a unique idea to incor­po­rate the amper­sand in so many dif­fer­ent ways. I think those would be great as a framed set, or in a set of three (how would you be able to choose only three?) Here’s wish­ing you great suc­cess with these and all of your oth­er unique­ly cre­ative endeav­ors. Good show.

    Reply
  6. The Hobbler Avatar
    The Hob­bler

    Hi Chaz, you streaked through my mind today, so I thought I’d stop over and say hi. I also want­ed to invite you to my bad girl blog http://​nothob​bling​now​.word​press​.com/ it’s a lit­tle more fun than the hob­bling side, although that one is still around too. Any­way, I hope you are doing well.

    Reply
  7. Gerry Avatar
    Ger­ry

    This is a GRoovy website!

    Reply
  8. Mindy Phillips Lawrence Avatar
    Mindy Phillips Lawrence

    Hel­lo Chaz! After I got your note, I decid­ed to take a gan­der at your web­site. Oh YEAH! I love it. I’m an artist/​​writer/​​publicity per­son who loves let­ter­ing. I do cal­lig­ra­phy and make hand­made Cop­tic and Japanese-​​bound books. Now that I know where you like on the Inter­net, I’ll be stop­ping by for tea and an Ampersand! 

    So glad Car­olyn Howard-​​Johnson intro­duced us by acci­dent in her newsletter!

    Mindy

    Reply
    1. Mindy Phillips Lawrence Avatar
      Mindy Phillips Lawrence

      That should be LIVE and not LIKE on the Inter­net. Zounds! I need an editor!

      Reply
      1. chazdesimone Avatar
        chazdes­i­mone

        Mindy, since you love let­ter­ing, I will keep you informed as to when I fill the let­ter­ing and typog­ra­phy sec­tion of my web­site (the graph­ic design site: http://​des​i​monedesign​.com) with exam­ples of my past work which spans over 40 years worth of romans, scripts, ser­ifs and lig­a­tures – both typog­ra­phy and pro­fes­sion­al hand let­ter­ing (BC – before computers).
        My lat­est let­ter­ing project has been design­ing and restor­ing silent film titles that are lost or dam­aged, for the Library of Con­gress as well as film col­lec­tors and his­to­ri­ans. I’ll post some of those as well.
        Please send me some exam­ples of your lettering.

        Reply
  9. Irma Oosthuizen Avatar
    Irma Oost­huizen

    Hi Chaz, thank you for sub­scrib­ing to our blog and for the nice com­ments & com­pli­ments! Thanks for decid­ing to share your love of the Amper­sand with the rest of us. The posters are stun­ning and I just have to com­pli­ment you on the Logo and sig­na­tures. I’ve always favoured the white block frame around posters and your design com­pletes & com­pli­ments the whole very well indeed. It adds that WOW factor.

    What can I say, I see very fine detail?! I guess if you love typog­ra­phy, you can help but notice?

    Reply
    1. Chaz DeSimone Avatar
      Chaz DeS­i­mone

      It is tru­ly a plea­sure meet­ing you, Irma. This is a rather new project, and to know I’ve reached some­one on the oher side of the globe is grat­i­fy­ing. Maybe it will spread like I hoped it would. We’ll cov­er the earth with amper­sands! I look very for­ward to stay­ing in touch with you and will share bril­liant typog­ra­phy as I come across it.

      Reply
  10. Chaz DeSimone Avatar
    Chaz DeS­i­mone

    Thank you. What specif­i­cal­ly can I elab­o­rate on for you? Are you inter­est­ed in the amper­sand, or art and design in gen­er­al? I can answer pret­ty much all your ques­tions about typography.

    Reply
  11. Nancy Avatar
    Nan­cy

    Sim­ply BRILLIANT!!! I laughed out loud when I read the line “But why are you sit­ting sideways?”

    Love the posters. Can’t wait to see them in retail stores all over the coun­try. Your own gallery show­ing is also on the horizon!

    Reply