Olufsens sidste rejse

In 1927–28, the Danish officer Ole Olufsen travelled through Niger with botanist Olaf Hagerup and taxidermist Harry Madsen. The book carries the weight of expedition, archive and memory — and the design had to honour that atmosphere without slipping into period pastiche.

The result is a quiet, material book: a half-binding with cloth spine, matte gold foil and a restrained interior built around historical photographs, generous margins and a warm spot colour.

The interior was set on 150 g Munken Pure — a heavy, creamy paper that gives the book a tactile weight. The photographs were given a subtle warm duplex, echoed in headlines, captions and pagination.

Instead of using an obvious historical typeface, I chose Miller Text: a contemporary interpretation with enough restraint, masculinity and literary presence to hold the material without imitating it.

The cover uses original photography, a textured woodcut background and matte foil. The aim was not to make the book look old, but to make it feel anchored — rich, dry, physical and quietly severe.