A wonderfully weird typeface from 1973 has come back to life — and somehow it looks more at home in 2026 than ever. Meet Clippy, the retro font that bends, rocks and wobbles its way into the digital age.

After 53 years working with type, Pat Lightizer got the ultimate retirement gift: her own font.

The ampersand is nearly 2,000 years old. yet designers still can’t agree on what it should look like. From ancient Roman *et* to hundreds of wildly different & designs, the story behind typography’s favorite squiggle is stranger than you might expect.

System fonts once defined the web's visual identity, but today they’re mostly fallback options, lacking the personality and control modern typography demands. In a world of variable fonts and expressive design, relying on system fonts isn’t nostalgic—it’s just lazy.