#How to save emails to computer aplus plus
“I’d like to tell you that the plus sign represents inclusiveness,” Steele says, “but the truth is it just looked f-ing cool.” He liked it and told their graphic designers to draw it up. When they decided to use the plus sign in 2008, before the restaurant opened, Steele had only seen it used by architecture firms. David Steele, one of the founders of the beloved, award-winning San Francisco restaurant Flour + Water, was also on the early side of the trend. “These media companies have to trademark globally, a monstrous task that innocent bystanders cannot begin to comprehend,” she says, “and appending a + to an existing name is an easy way to square the circle.”įor many, the aesthetic appeal of the plus sign is in its simplicity, which dovetails with a culture that fetishizes the raw, the elemental, the nostalgic - whether it is slow food or adult hide-and-seek. On top of that, Cypher notes, it bypasses red tape.
“The value of + is that it implies more, better, premium,” explains Maria Cypher, creative director at naming company Catchword, “without being specific as to content, scale, or degree of premium-ness.” It suggests customers will be getting something extra without making it at all clear what that extra thing might be. Also, McCulloch notes, a lot of people can’t draw ampersands, while even people who sign their name with an “X” possess the skills necessary to successfully deploy the “+.”įor companies like Disney and Apple (which also tacked the symbol onto a new media product, Apple News+), there is a different kind of functional appeal. It can attract eyeballs and aid comprehension by creating whitespace. It can also serve as a “DIY graphic design element,” both on labels and on platforms like Twitter that don’t allow for other visual cues like italics or differently sized fonts. Of them, roughly 54% said that aesthetics were at least part of the reason, while 43.5% said the draw was purely functional.įunctionally, McCulloch says, the plus sign can save time and space, especially when writing by hand. More than 58% of 400 respondents said they do. On TIME’s behalf, Internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch fielded a poll to her Twitter followers asking whether they use the plus sign as a substitute for words like and or as well as and why. For example: “War is expensive, the most likely thing to bankrupt your nation-state, with highly unpredictable economic costs to future generations + it’s immoral af.”Īs Goetz puts it, the plus sign “has become a new vernacular.”
#How to save emails to computer aplus full
High-touch realtors now advertise “featured listings + off market opportunities,” and event promoters for luxury brands promise “the full store shopping experience + of course fun activities.” The plus sign has even developed new cachet in casual communication, as breezy shorthand for adding people to email chains (“+ Kirk and Cody”) and calculated snark on social media, where Internet people wield it with the same flair as prepositional because. Monica + Andy, for example, makes children’s clothing that appeals to “you + your baby” and offers “events + classes” as well as “returns + exchanges.” boon eat + drink sources “seasonal + sustainable” ingredients in California to make “simple + tasty” food every “friday + saturday.” (Its proprietor, btw, also runs a “hotel + spa.”)įrom branding, it is a small jump to marketing materials. The enthusiasm some brands have for the symbol can hardly be contained. There are plus-adorned handbags (Foley + Corinna), soaps (Etta + Billie), men’s clothing lines (Mizzen+Main) and wines (++ Double Plus ++). But that is just the latest sector to catch the fever, alongside industries ranging from fashion to food.
Most recently, the plus sign has become a sigil in the streaming wars (Apple TV+, Disney+, ESPN+). “Now it’s everywhere,” Goetz says of the plus sign. “The plus sign is very modern,” Goetz says, “and it was very important for the brand to be minimalist and contemporary.” It was also important for the brand to stand out, which the symbol helped do back when Facebook was headquartered in a college dorm room. And it was the antithesis of &’s old-timey excess. The plus sign spoke to everything on the duo’s mood board, from an apothecary concept (echoing the crosses that mark pharmacies throughout Europe) to their balanced partnership both in business and in life.
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