Original source of [thing]& [thing]& [thing] text layout?

Cafe Society
1

I have seen this a few times recently on t-shirts, but my sense is that it is not strictly a t-shirt thing. And those t-shirts were being worn by people on-stage at the close of Saturday Night Live, but my sense is that it is not strictly an SNL thing.

When Seth Meyers hosted SNL earlier this season, he came out at the end wearing a t-shirt that read…

Axel&
Ashe&
Alexi&
Frisbee

It was a shout-out to his family; these are the names of his kids, wife, and dog. (Frisbee is the dog.)

Also this season, someone on stage (I forget who) was wearing a similar t-shirt with the names of former SNL cast members. It was something like…

Farley&
Spade&
Sandler&
Rock

The latter example is an approximation as I’m going by memory. I’m pretty sure I got the earlier example right, though, because I found it for sale. Cool; who doesn’t want a t-shirt with the names of Seth Meyers’ family on it? If you don’t mind clicking on a site with a Liechtensteiner domain name, you can see it here: https://rsz.tzy.li/816/918/tzy/previews/images/001/442/499/601/original/axel-ashe-alexi-frisbee-shirt.jpg?1539529371

I am assuming both t-shirts were created in the style of something that already existed. Does anyone know what original design these are playing off of?

2

Ha, I posted the OP right after chastising the folks at another message board for not solving this for me, and the thread bump actually netted me an answer. I should have been more patient. This seems to be what I was looking for:

https://www.howdesign.com/how-design-blog/origin-of-helvetica-ampersand-list-t-shirts/

So, um… as you were!

3

Beat me to it, as a T-Shirt designer this was one I could finally answer.

4

It still doesn’t answer what I wondered most: why no space between the name and ampersand? That’s what makes it look odd to me. We always right, for example, “Ben & Jerry’s.”

I actually thought it might have to do with programming.

I will admit, it looks more aesthetically pleasing in the original, for reasons I cannot place my fingers on. It looks off on many of the others–like the balance is not achieved.