Matt Lamont’s extraordinary archive of 10,000+ printed design artefacts is heading into book form — and it deserves your attention.
If you’ve spent any time in the world of graphic design, you’ll know how fragile its history can be. Magazines go out of print. Posters get lost. The work of whole movements disappears into boxes. Matt Lamont — designer, collector, and educator based in Bradford — has spent over a decade fighting that entropy, assembling one of the most comprehensive private graphic design archives in the country.
Now, in partnership with Unit Editions, he’s bringing the best of it into a single book. Design Reviewed is currently crowdfunding on Volume, and it looks seriously special.
What is Design Reviewed?
The Design Reviewed website has been quietly building for years — a digital archive cataloguing everything from rare typographic periodicals like Typographische Monatsblätter and Typografia to posters, stamps and ephemera from across the globe. Every item in the archive also has a physical presence in Matt’s Bradford studio, where it’s actively used for educational workshops, visiting lectures and as a wellspring of inspiration for working designers.
The planned book spans a century of graphic design history, from Art Nouveau and Early Modernism through to Pop and Post Modernism. Crucially, the selection isn’t driven by personal taste alone — it’s chosen to illuminate wider historical movements, ideas and approaches within the discipline.
The Book
At 400 pages, hardback, 279 × 234mm, and published by Unit Editions — whose track record for beautifully produced design books speaks for itself — this looks like a genuinely serious publication. Not a coffee table novelty, but a study tool and reference work you’d actually return to. Foil typography details round out what sounds like a production to match the quality of the content.
“I hope the book can be a celebration of visual reference, a study tool and a way of bringing the archive out of the boxes and shelves and into your hands. Something you can return to again and again for inspiration and context.” — Matt Lamont
The Collector’s Edition
There’s also a Collector’s Edition housed in a shoulder-neck slipcase, with a cut-back front board that reveals the contents page, a nice touch. It comes with a full A-Z postcard set (26 cards, each featuring a letterform from the archive with designer credits on the reverse) and an exclusive A2 folded poster. Limited to 250 copies.
The campaign is 76% funded with a deadline of 29 April 2026. Estimated delivery is Summer 2027. Worth backing now if you’re interested — the Collector’s Edition in particular won’t hang around.
