In addition to providing something for the potential buyer in a bookstore or the reader at home to gaze at reflectively before opening the book, we identified two other objectives in our design.

The most prominent was to bring to Conrad’s well-known preoccupation with the sea a contemporary sense. Gerhard Richter’s series of photos offers a democratized, understated factuality to a subject often treated with more romantic imagery. The grouping of photographs also reflects the organization of the book, a series of stories.

A sensitivity to the literary heritage of Conrad’s work is implemented through a nineteenth-century book-arts style in the design and typography. This sets up a conceptual tension between the traditionalist typographic design and the contemporary artwork, one that parallels the experience of reading Conrad in the late twentieth century.