Alphabetical Playground

Driven by a fascination with the alphabet as a vessel for unlimited visual concepts, systems and languages, Alphabetical Playground explores a wide range of themes concerning expression in text. It presents a series of graphic experiments that investigate and manipulate the building blocks of language. Beginning as a series of ongoing variable type experiments, unused project concepts and playful takes on existing letterform typologies, the book is an attempt to consolidate these varying ideas into a playful collection of Alphabets, a showcase of how far we can push the medium of type design and structure.

Ultimately—although it may not always be immediately apparent—everything on these pages is language. This work demonstrates how text allows us to embed our thoughts, beliefs and systems within it: a code within a code, a game within a game, a system within a system. It serves as a reminder of the alphabet’s enormous potential to transcend its fundamental purpose as a tool for communication and instead become a limitless space for creative expression.

Nigel Cottier's new book of experimental type ideas is an investigation into how we can use the Alphabet as a container for countless graphic systems, conceptual ideas, and endless play.

With a foreword from Hamish Muir, Alphabetical Playground is Nigel Cottier’s second book on experimental type after Letterform Variations, released in 2021.