Before letters, each person was named by a series of musical notes, making it difficult for party guests to introduce themselves without a pitch pipe. Celebrate the boons of alphabet-based nomenclature with today’s Groupon: for $65, you get 3 to 11 letters of photographic name art from Hal Jaffe Name Art, a Memphis-based studio that ships nationally (a $159.95 value, including tax).
A second-generation photographer, Hal Jaffe created his collection of name art by photographing natural and structural objects that resemble letters, from a park swing that looks like a U to a bend in a shoreline that resembles an R. Type any name into the form on Jaffe’s website to see options for spelling it out in a wide variety of black-and-white, sepia-tone, or color images. Then 13"x37" prints of the selected pictures are nestled into custom black or white mats and fitted with a frame, avoiding the hassle of mounting them on jewel-encrusted artifacts from Dark Ages mall kiosks.