[4][5] Aldridge was born in North London but moved and lived in Los Angeles, California in the 1980s, searching for opportunities in film and design.

[12][11] In February 1969, Aldridge designed the graphics for the controversial Jane Arden play Vagina Rex and the Gas Oven at the London Arts Laboratory, Drury Lane.

[11] Aldridge is possibly best known for the picture book The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper Feast (1973), a series of illustrations of anthropomorphic insects and other creatures, which he created in collaboration with Harry Willock.

This was based on William Roscoe's poem of the same name, but was inspired when Aldridge read that John Tenniel had told Lewis Carroll it was impossible to draw a wasp in a wig.

[13] A retrospective Alan Aldridge – the Man with the Kaleidoscope Eyes featured at the Design Museum in London from 10 October 2008 to 25 January 2009, and was reviewed as "The trip of a lifetime".