Jazz

Some books arrive with a personal echo. I grew up immersed in the music and visual worlds of Blue Note Records, Motown and the Philly Sound. The typography, photography and spare elegance of those record covers became part of my visual memory long before I became a designer.

Finn Slumstrup’s manuscript carried that same deep love of jazz. It was knowledgeable, generous and full of enthusiasm — and from the beginning, I wanted the design to let that affection come through.

My first instinct was to make the interior vibrate with the energy of the music itself — something rhythmic, expressive and full of movement. A graphic echo of the way Matisse brought jazz into his cut-paper illustrations.

But the photographs changed the direction. They were too good to compete with: musicians caught in moments of concentration, humour, warmth and presence. A louder layout would only get in their way.

In the end, the solution became quieter: a crisp modular grid, generous white space and a discreet typographic nod to the great Blue Note covers of the 1950s and 60s. The jazz is still there — not as decoration, but in the proportions, spacing and rhythm of the pages.

It became one of those projects where the right decision was also the restrained one: to listen to the material, trust the photographs and let the music speak without overplaying it.