John Mehegan, Jazz Improvisation (1959-65)

Jazz Improvisation is a series of 4 books edited by pianist, composer, lecturer, and critic John Mehegan between 1959 and 1965. Today considered classic of jazz instructional books, the four volumes feature anthologies of scores from jazz standards and forewords by renowned Jazz musicians and present a very simple yet stunning graphic design.

According to online useful tool WhatTheFont , each volume’s cover sports titles – mostly aligned to the right side – in the modern Folio typeface developed by designers Konrad Friedrich Bauer and Walter Baum, for the Elsner+Flake type foundry. In addition, each cover includes an image which is a collage of a musical instrument. Very subtly, these collages seem to echo the subject of each one of the volumes, modifying the original photographs with techniques such as repetition, displacements, fragmentation, and recomposition.

Unfortunately, the credits in the book don’t specify who’s the designer nor the photographer or artist of each image. We can argue these persons worked in the same offices of the publishing house at the time of the publication (Amsco publication). Obviously, if any reader knows better, we would be glad to include this information.

Today the four volumes are easily available on anyone of the major online book sellers.