It is a logogram rather than an abbreviation. Avant Garde was a magazine notable for graphic and logogram design by Herb Lubalin. A hieroglyph used as a logogram defines the object of which it is an image. A "logogram" is a single written character which represents a complete grammatical word. The ampersand is the logogram , representing the conjunction "and". A logogram is a written character which represents a word or morpheme. Because of its ubiquity, it is generally no longer considered a ligature, but a logogram.