typo* – A Scrapbook of Typographic Obsession

Design­er Andy Alt­mann pur­sued an obses­sion with typo­graph­ic odd­i­ties for more than 30 years; and he wasn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly inter­est­ed in the kind of thing you might expect. He delight­ed in the weird and won­der­ful and found inspi­ra­tion in the ordi­nary. He set out to organ­ise his typo­graph­ic hits and miss­es in a 400-page, whop­per of a scrap­book, which he com­plet­ed short­ly before his trag­i­cal­ly ear­ly death. Con­ceived and edit­ed by Andy, typo* is a cor­nu­copia of curiosi­ties. Essen­tial is too small a word for it: every graph­ic design­er and typog­ra­ph­er should have a copy. Keep it by your key­board or refer to it secret­ly when you’re stuck for an idea, you’ll won­der how you ever man­aged with­out it. Design writer Jim K Davies has added a short biog­ra­phy of Andy, so that typo* also stands as a memo­r­i­al to one of Britain’s most influ­en­tial graph­ic designers.

*typo (noun): an error (as of spelling) in typed or type­set mate­r­i­al; (abbr.) typog­ra­phy or typographer

Andy Alt­mann (1962−2025) was a found­ing part­ner at Why Not Asso­ciates, one of the UK’s lead­ing mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary design com­pa­nies. Although he trained as a graph­ic design­er, Andy’s work typ­i­cal­ly blurred the bound­ary between design and art. His projects ranged from exhi­bi­tion design to postage stamps, via adver­tis­ing, pub­lish­ing, tele­vi­sion titles, com­mer­cials, cor­po­rate iden­ti­ty and large-scale pub­lic art. The com­mon thread was a fun­da­men­tal love of typog­ra­phy, exper­i­men­ta­tion and above all humour. His crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed tat* – Inspi­ra­tional Graph­ic Ephemera, was pub­lished by Cir­ca in 2021.

Jim K Davies is a for­mer Guardian jour­nal­ist and the author of Logo Rhythm – Band Logos that Rocked the World, pub­lished by Cir­ca in 2024. He has con­tributed to design pub­li­ca­tions rang­ing from Domus in Italy to Idea in Japan, to Print in the US. A huge funk and soul fan, two of the most mem­o­rable weeks of his life were spent as an intern at Melody Mak­er.