typo* – A Scrapbook of Typographic Obsession

Design­er Andy Alt­mann has been pur­su­ing an obses­sion with typo­graph­ic odd­i­ties for more than 30 years; and he’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly inter­est­ed in the kind of thing you might expect. He delights in the weird and won­der­ful and finds inspi­ra­tion in the ordi­nary. At last, he has organ­ised his typo­graph­ic hits and miss­es in a 400-page, whop­per of a scrap­book. 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.

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

Andy Alt­mann has an inde­pen­dent design con­sul­tan­cy, based in Lon­don. He was one of the found­ing part­ners of the mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary design agency, Why Not Asso­ciates, which he dis­solved in 2000. Although he trained as a graph­ic design­er, Andy’s work typ­i­cal­ly blurs the bound­ary between design and art. His projects range from exhi­bi­tion design to postage stamps, via adver­tis­ing, pub­lish­ing, cor­po­rate iden­ti­ty and large-scale pub­lic art. The com­mon thread is a fun­da­men­tal love of typog­ra­phy, research, and exper­i­men­ta­tion. He is the author of the crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed tat* – Inspi­ra­tional Graph­ic Ephemera.