Book

Neil Shapiro Rolls Out the Long-Awaited "Jazz Alphabet"

In the past 18 years, we've had the chance to work across a whole array of industries. We've built websites, of course, but also the technology base for a sports drink company, branding for (it seems) every kind of sporting good you can imagine, and managed lots and lots of online marketing. Nothing, though, is quite like the chance to work with the occasional super-talented artist, those with legitimate, old-school skills to put paint and paper to work. Featured here, Neil Shapiro, a Chicago illustrator with an obsession, of sorts, with jazz.



Neil rolled around this idea for a book of jazz greats organized by alphabet for 20 years and mentioned it to me a few years ago. It seemed like such a fun, funny, and cool pursuit. I'd seen other artists take on the alphabet as a structural form onto which they could improvise in the past – think John Lennon's perfectly oddball alphabet poem – but Neil's final product takes it to the next level: indulging, as Neil says, his love of both the music and letterform.

For more information on Neil's incredible book, click here. For a PBS video interview with Neil, click here.

– Jon

Jon is the CEO of GimmeAnother and founder of 3VERB.