Punctuation, Ligatures and Emojis

For this assignment we were tasked with creating a new character using a typeface of our choice. Through development of ideas and experimentation, our aim was to create a new ligature that will work both as a written character and as a key on a keyboard. To start this project, we looked at the origin of the Ampersand or the '&' sign and how this character has had so many variations through history.

My initial starting point for this project was to search for the most popular abbreviations used in popular culture. Some of these abbreviations includes TBH, BTW, LOL, OMG, BFF, AFK and BAE etc. From this, I began creating several quick sketches of these abbreviations in different variations until they look like they could be used as a ligature.
Here is an example of how I came up with several variations of the abbreviation 'ASAP', and from them I chose ones that I thought would work the best as a ligature.

However, as we were tasked with creating our ligatures in groups, we instead decided to use the abbreviation 'TBH' (to be honest). In the same way as before we devised several potential ideas as initial sketches that could be used as our final ligature. Here are our final mock up designs of the ligature, which we believe simplify the abbreviation while still making it noticeable to the original letters. After receiving feedback from our peers we found that the ligature would work successfully both in written form and as a key on a keyboard, but it could have been simplified further by taking away the ascender on the left and the T shape at the end of the the right.
As shown in red I have created a response to the feedback and suggestions given at the group critique. Having simplified the ligature further I feel this shape works even better as it would be quick and easy to draw by hand.